


somewhere only we know

by zoeyclarke



Category: Frozen (Disney Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Elsamaren is main pairing, F/F, F/M, First Meetings, Flirty Maren, Flustered Elsa, Olaf and Bruni are cats, Romance, Sisterly Love, Slow Burn (kinda), Useless Lesbians, and Kristanna is mostly background, sven is a dog
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2020-03-22
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 45,267
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21689611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zoeyclarke/pseuds/zoeyclarke
Summary: Elsa didn't plan on moving up north. She didn't plan on living far away from her sister, but she needs a change.She also didn't plan on acting like a complete fool in front of the pretty girl working at the ski shop. But at this point, she really should be expecting every curveball life throws at her.
Relationships: Anna/Kristoff (Disney), Elsa/Honeymaren (Disney)
Comments: 206
Kudos: 631





	1. thursday, november 17

**Author's Note:**

> helloooo again! here i am starting a multichapter fic and this time i actually have a vague outline for how it's gonna go! let's see how closely i stick to that. i'm not planning for this to be super long, so there's going to be several time skips here. 
> 
> this first chapter is kind of set up like a prologue as a meet-cute for kristanna. honeymaren will be making her first appearance next chapter, no worries!
> 
> i hope you guys enjoy. thanks again for all the love on my other elsamaren fic <3
> 
> title is taken from "somewhere only we know" by keane.

first sight she made me look twice

'cause i'd never seen someone walk as light as the wind blows

\- borns, "seeing stars"

* * *

_ November 2016 _

“... I think I really messed up this time, sis. Like,  _ truly  _ and  _ royally  _ fucked up.”

Elsa switches the phone to her other ear and shakes her head, trying to make sense of what she’s hearing. She hasn’t even been on the call for a minute and already too much information has rushed at her, shooting out of a firehose, more than she can absorb at once. It’s the typical way her sister goes about explaining simple things. “Anna, you’re gonna have to repeat everything you just said. And calm down while you’re at it.” On the surface Elsa knows the words probably come off as scathing, but the patient tone she pairs them with are a combination Anna should be all too familiar with by now.

From the other end of the line, an irritated sigh crackles into Elsa’s ear. “Okay, okay. So I was driving home from work, and there was traffic, so I decided to take a more scenic route, you know, back country roads, only it was getting dark, so—”

“Slow it down, just a  _ little  _ bit more.”

There’s another huff before Anna goes on. “It was getting dark, so it was kind of tricky to see around the curves, so I’m going pretty slow. And then I went around this bend, and before I could even  _ blink,  _ something hit my car. Or... I guess technically my car hit something. But either way, it’s not good.”

Elsa stirs a partial spoonful of sugar into her tea and sits down at the kitchen table. She’s tired of cradling the phone between her shoulder and ear, so she puts her sister on speaker and drops the device next to her cup on the table. “Have you gotten out of the car yet? You better not—”

“Of  _ course  _ I did!” 

Elsa’s eyes slip shut. Of course she did.

“I had to see what poor creature I accidentally ran into,” Anna says. She sounds breathless, maybe a bit exhilarated. “And you won’t believe what it is.”

“What is it?”

“It’s a dog!” Anna exclaims. “At least, I think it’s a dog. A huge one. It’s big and brown and— well, I thought it was a deer, but it didn’t have antlers, then I was like, maybe it’s a bear, but it hasn’t growled or attacked me yet, so...”

Elsa swirls around the green tea, watching the last of the sugar crystals dissolve at the bottom. Her fingers drum along the edge of the old mug Anna got her from Target a few years ago. It’s the kind with a cheesy phrase written on it in a script-like font:  _ “Sisters before misters.”  _ True to her character, Anna meant that unironically and never once put a man above Elsa— though they aren’t getting any younger now. Maybe it’s time for a change.

“It’s not...  _ dead,  _ is it?” Elsa finally asks the dreaded question. If the creature— dog, or whatever it is— isn’t trying to attack the person who unintentionally harmed it, it’s either gravely injured or deader than the goldfish Anna accidentally flushed down the toilet when she was seven. 

“Nope. He seems okay.” Anna still sounds uncertain, and that sets Elsa on edge.

“Well, I still think you should get back in the car, because you’re out on a dark road in the middle of the woods,” Elsa points out between sips. “If it’s fine, then it’ll get up and run away eventually.”

Something rustles again on Anna’s end, but the noise isn’t made by the sound of a car door closing Anna back into safety. “He’s okay, he’s friendly,” Anna mutters, completely breezing past what Elsa just said. “But he’s still hurt, Els. I can’t just leave him. In fact... oh! He has a collar! I can call his owner and—”

Her voice abruptly tapers off, though that isn’t even the right way to describe it. It’s more like her voice completely stops, cut off neatly by an unknown source. Instinctively Elsa stands up, leaving her tea to go lukewarm as she paces. “Anna? Anna, are you there?” 

Her heart stays in her throat despite her sister only taking a few (too many) heart-thudding seconds to answer. “Sorry. Just, um... I think the dog’s owner just pulled up,” Anna murmurs. The shaky undertone crouching behind each syllable is unmistakable. “Oh, yep. Yep. It’s definitely him. And he does  _ not  _ look happy.” Another pause, then “I gotta go.”

“No! Wait! Where are you?”

“I’m fine, there’s no need—”

“I’m coming there whether you like it or not. You’re out in the middle of nowhere at night  _ and  _ there’s an angry man approaching you? Hell no. Anna, tell me the road you’re on.”

Haltingly, her sister mumbles out the name of a road Elsa’s never heard of. After one last order for Anna to get back in her car and lock the doors, they hang up. Elsa is in her pajamas, but that doesn’t even cross her mind as she yanks her arms through the sleeves of her white puffy coat. Olaf, the more affectionate of her two cats, circles her feet and curls his cream-colored tail around her ankles. “I just fed you an hour ago, fluffybutt,” she chuckles, leaning down to run her hand absently along his spine a couple of times. “Go bother your brother.” In response, Olaf blinks his round amber eyes up at her a couple times and mews softly. “Go on,” Elsa says, smirking and waving her hand. “You’re not about to go out there, it’s thirty degrees.”

Finally Olaf scampers off, probably to annoy Bruni out of whichever hiding place he’s chosen today. With the cat gone, all of Elsa’s fears come rushing back. She haphazardly layers a scarf around her neck and shoulders, buttons up her coat, grabs her keys, and launches herself out the front door.

Pennsylvania winters are no joke. It may still be November, but it might as well be winter already, Elsa thinks as she crunches over the snow to get to where her car is parked along the curb. The fallen leaves she failed to rake up are now a mess of half-rotted mush beneath the inch-thick blanket of snow, and any of the rusted leaves still clinging to tree branches are lined with frost. Elsa stomps the snow off her boots before climbing in behind the wheel and plugging the weird road name Anna gave her into her phone. It’s a little over ten minutes away. Great. Overzealous twenty-three-year-olds can get murdered by angry bear-dog owners in way less than ten minutes.

Luckily, she turns onto the correct street a little earlier than her phone estimates. Turning off the GPS, Elsa slows her speed a bit and leans forward, squinting at the path ahead swallowed by darkness. She flicks on her high beams and creeps onward, glad nobody is right behind her. The road curves and twists through the wooded area like a flat black serpent pockmarked with potholes and faded road markings. Even the occasional signs she passes are practically unreadable. 

How in the world did Anna stumble upon this strange little corner of purgatory? The Red Robin she part-time waitresses at is in a pretty busy town area, so it makes no sense that she would end up out here. Elsa sighs as she steers carefully around another blind bend. They wouldn’t be in this situation if it weren’t for the student loans her sister desperately needs to pay off. Anna already works full time at a law firm, but this side gig is unfortunately very necessary for her at the moment. Meanwhile, here Elsa is with her useless art degree, four years out of school and still working for the boring company she got an internship with back in her junior year. She hadn’t planned on cramming herself into a cubicle and sitting in front of a computer every day, yet here she is anyway— the perfect cliche. 

This road seems to go on forever. Elsa is almost sure she’s about to reach the end of it when  _ finally  _ her headlights illuminate a sign of life. She immediately recognizes Anna’s little red Corolla, pulled off awkwardly onto the narrow shoulder, hazard lights flashing. An old forest-green pickup truck is parked on the opposite side of the road, its front bumper as rusty as the dead leaves on the trees in Elsa’s yard. Elsa brakes and stops the car behind her sister’s, then wastes no time hopping out.

She shuffles over, suddenly painfully aware of the bleach-stained old yoga pants she’s wearing, stuffed sloppily into her ancient pair of chestnut Uggs. Her hair isn’t much to speak of either, gathered into a loose braid which she tosses over her shoulder. Well, if she must look like shit while confronting this angry dude, then so be it. It’s not as if she cares much about how men see her, anyway.

“Anna!” she calls, approaching the front end of her sister’s car. But when she peers inside, the driver’s seat is unoccupied. Elsa’s stomach lurches and her body falls forward with it— and it’s then that she spots Anna kneeling in front of the slightly crumpled nose of the vehicle. It’s not her car that she’s fretting over, though; it’s the panting animal stretched out on the crumbly asphalt. And nearby Anna, also crouched, is a broad-shouldered man bundled up in a green flannel jacket and black knit hat. “Anna,” she says again, exasperation stretching out her words, “this is one hell of a shortcut, don’t you think?”

“Oh, hi!” Anna springs up, auburn hair bouncing around her shoulders. She tugs at Elsa’s hand, urging her closer to the dog at the center of everyone’s attention. “Everything’s fine, see? There was really no reason for you to come. But I’m glad you did, ‘cause now you can meet Sven!”

Elsa joins her, squatting down at the dog’s head. Anna was right— he really is an enormous animal, with a bulky, well-muscled body covered in shaggy brown fur. Half a glance suggests he might be a German Shepherd, or maybe a Saint Bernard, a mix of some sort. He definitely doesn’t appear to be badly wounded, either, since he has his head raised to sniff at Elsa’s outstretched hand. She doesn’t miss the dark stain of blood on his flank, though.

“Uh, hello, Sven,” Elsa coos, feeling around the unusual name on her tongue.

“Yeah, just a scrape,” the man mutters, and Elsa startles a little because she nearly forgot he was there too. She catches Anna’s eye and jerks her head at him, silently asking for an introduction.

“Oh, right.” Anna’s sharp blue gaze flicks shyly from the stranger to Sven, whose fur she is continuously gliding her fingers through. “Um, this is Chris.”

“Chris” glances up and offers them a lopsided grin, an expression that Elsa finds oddly endearing. “It’s  _ Kristoff,  _ actually,” he corrects, reaching out to shake Elsa’s hand. “It’s an old family name. So is Sven. Norwegian, or something. I think.” He shakes his head, apparently realizing he’s rambling. “And you are?”

“Elsa. I’m her sister.”

Anna is frowning, scratching Sven’s pointed ears as she looks coolly at Kristoff. “Close enough,” she mumbles as an afterthought to her mistake. Elsa identifies this behavior easily; that playful glint in her sister’s eyes can be found in the Textbook of Anna, in the glossary under “flirty.” Elsa bites back a groan and hunches her shoulders against the November chill. Of all the people her sister has fallen for, the man whose dog she nearly killed is  _ definitely  _ a less-than-stellar option. He  _ is  _ taking it incredibly well, though. His anger must’ve faded quickly. Anna’s cute charm probably dampened those flames real quick.

“Well, anyway,” Elsa says, hoping to steer her sister’s calculating stare away from the unsuspecting Kristoff. “We’re really sorry about your dog.  _ She” _ — she digs her elbow softly into Anna’s side— “obviously didn’t mean to hurt him.”

“Oh, don’t worry. He’s fine. He’s just being a big baby about it,” Kristoff replies. He ruffles the tufty fur along Sven’s back and laughs. “He’s a total softie on the inside but I swear he’s made of iron on the outside. All he got is a little road rash. It looks worse than it is. I can patch him up in no time.”

Elsa blows out a relieved breath that billows in front of her like cigarette smoke. “Oh, good.”

Anna’s eyes flash and she still refuses to make eye contact with Elsa, because they both know very well that the expression on Elsa’s face is one of discouragement. “You should keep a better eye on Sven,” Anna hums, feigning disinterest. “It’s like no man’s land out here, anything could happen to him if he’s alone.”

Elsa has to admit she has a point. But then Kristoff chuckles again, shaggy blond strands falling onto his forehead. He’s completely sidestepping Anna’s so-called “techniques,” and it’s kind of satisfying to observe. 

“Anything happening to this big guy? Nah. Your one-ton roller skate barely put a dent in him. Like I said, he’s made of steel.” Kristoff hesitates, skimming his fingers over the tiny patch of fur slick with blood, then adds, “... but I probably should watch over him a little more closely while he’s healing.”

“Sounds good to me,” Anna says, and it comes out so quick it’s like a snap. Then, all at once, she drops the act and takes on an overly casual tone. “But... maybe you should like... give me your number. Just so you can, like, let me know for sure that he’s okay.”

The excessive  _ “likes”  _ sprinkled in are never a good sign. Elsa aims a stone-faced look at her sister, but Anna pays no attention. She’s already handing her phone over to Kristoff so he can type in his digits.

Elsa watches the way Kristoff holds Anna’s phone lightly in his gloved hands, typing one-handed like a middle-aged mom with thick fingers. He has every reason to toss her phone into the forest, scoop up Sven, and take off— but he doesn’t. And Elsa watches him hand the device back, holding Anna’s gaze, the tiniest trace of a grin on his face while Anna surveys him with with a stubborn furrow in her brow. He has every reason to spit at their feet and zoom away in his truck— but he doesn’t. And Elsa begins to think maybe this isn’t so bad—

“Well,” Anna coughs, starting to stand up. “Keep me updated on him. And... sorry, again.” Then she smiles back, and it’s tentative, but it’s still there.

— maybe this isn’t so bad, but that doesn’t mean Elsa has to like it right away.

_ Damn it.  _


	2. sunday, december 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks a lot for all the love so far! this chapter got a bit longer than i intended, and normally i would've split this up but i want to keep this at ten chapters. enjoy <3

look into my eyes

waste away the time ...

find me a face ...

that i can memorize

\- aly & aj, "good love"

* * *

_3 Years Later_

Elsa takes a moment to sit in her car in the grocery store parking lot. The short walk between building and vehicle was surprisingly grueling; last night’s weather had laid out a dangerous playing field of black ice, slush, and minimal road salt over the entire lot. Navigating that with two grocery bags swinging from each hand entailed holding her arms out like a scarecrow to maintain her balance. She then became an unprofessional ice skater who misplaced her skates and instead had to rely on her scuffed-up old boots to slide until she literally smacked head-on into the side of her parked car.

So yeah, after that, she needs a second to catch her breath. The car is still turned off, so it’s freezing enough inside to see the tired puffs of carbon dioxide she pants out. She can’t help the wheezy giggle that slips out also, because _why_ is all the snow and ice still so off-putting to her anyway? She and Anna are originally from upstate New York, and Pennsylvania’s wintry weather is nothing to sneeze at either. But Vermont— Vermont is a different story. And she’s been here for three months now.

Elsa happened to move into her new cottage the same day as Vermont’s first snow— in September. It had been an unintentional choice on her part, and the panic didn’t set in until hours into her drive up from her former home. (Moving boxes of stuff through a blizzard is, in short, not fun.) She quit her old job, secured slightly better employment up here, then packed her car until it was bursting at the seams. The only things she left behind were a sniffling Anna, their parents, and Olaf and Bruni, whom she had to leave with her sister and Kristoff because her new landlord didn’t allow pets. Elsa thought that was an interesting detail, considering she saw her landlord a few days after moving in, walking around the grounds with three huge dogs trotting loose alongside him. She decided not to potentially provoke the person who had the power to kick her out into the cold, so she’d said nothing.

Other than that, however, it’s been great. Warren, a small town of just over one thousand people, is comfortable for Elsa. She walks around, and the streets and sidewalks and stores are like an old broken-in pair of shoes, like places she has known her entire life when in reality she couldn’t be any more foreign to the peace up here. In fact, the moment Elsa drove into the town limits that day in September, she drove into open, welcoming arms.

Blowing out one more calming breath, Elsa turns the key in the ignition and guides her car back out onto the road. The silver sedan is getting on a bit in years now, and Elsa knows she should probably get something that has four-wheel drive. She’s reminded of this a second later when her tires skid a bit on a turn. She’s quick to correct her position and not drift out into the woods that begin an inch from the edge of the road. The road to the local grocery store, Shaw’s, is familiar to Elsa, and after a month of living here she’d realized why: it reminds her of that twisty country road where she and Anna first met Kristoff. It’s the kind of road that was gently carved through the woods, quietly snaking through the trees, doing its best to not disturb. It was built to follow the natural path made by nature, to involve the least amount of cut-down trees. It does wind and bend and curve a bit excessively, but it’s fun to follow along that way, and Elsa does just that, all whimsical and content. It’s like driving on a ribbon.

For a while, Elsa genuinely couldn’t say why she wanted to move up here— and it’s a question she has been asked a _lot,_ most of all by Anna. But now she has found her answer, and it’s a million little things: the way the skylight in her new bedroom sparkles in the morning, tree branches tapping the glass like friendly skeletal fingers; the way the roads here don’t have any shoulder space, leaving as much room as possible for the grass and trees and the frost that blankets them like translucent rust. In Pennsylvania, snow would fall and it would stay pretty for a few seconds before getting trampled down, and within a day it would be reduced to black sludge. Here in Vermont, things stay blissfully untouched for weeks and weeks, leaving open fields of smooth white well into March. Here, billboards are outlawed, the road salt isn’t harsh chemicals, and the people smile and wave and say hello.

Even with all that adoration thoroughly sewn into Elsa’s mind now, she can’t forget the look on Anna’s face the day she left home. Her sister stood in Elsa’s rearview mirror, perfectly centered in it like they were in a sad movie. By leaving behind Anna and the vastness of her sister’s loss— something she has made very apparent to Elsa— means that, in reality, Elsa left behind a _lot_ in Harrisburg. More than she wants to admit. At the very least, she does miss seeing that shock of red hair and the vibrant blue eyes that have never failed to bring color into her very gray and white life. She misses their parents (mostly), she misses Kristoff’s laugh and his insane talent for charades, she misses Olaf’s insistent mews and Bruni’s purr that sounds like a broken radiator, she misses Sven’s distorted bark and lopsided ears. But that’s it.

Elsa slows and turns to start up the long, steep road to her home. Her cottage is nestled high up on Sugarbush Mountain, and part of a sprawling partially-wooded complex with cottages of all shapes and sizes and names. After nearly ten minutes of climbing, she reaches the turn into Southface, her unusual little neighborhood. The car’s wheels crunch and spit out gravel, and the engine gives an exhausted sigh when Elsa finally parks and shuts it off. Illuminated in her headlights is a rusty mailbox on a crooked stake, and next to that is an equally aged sign branded with the name of her humble abode: _Arendelle._ When Elsa met her landlord, she asked him where the name came from, but only received a shrug and a chuckle. _“Where does your name come from?”_ he’d countered, tilting his head at her like one of his three giant slobbering dogs. _“Where does mine come from? Nobody ever really knows. There’s only vague ideas.”_ Then he started to turn away, only to throw one last remark over his shoulder: _“Or just try Google, Ms. Winter.”_

She bustles inside with her groceries, setting the paper bags on the kitchen counter. Some of the flimsy handles nearly tore off in her struggle across the parking lot, and if they _had_ broken that would’ve been an utter disaster. Elsa takes her time putting things away, humming along to the lyrics of Taylor Swift’s “Lover” in her head. After rearranging the items in her freezer five times to accommodate an unnecessary pint of Ben & Jerry’s— the mere fact that she has trouble finding a way to fit it in is a sign she shouldn’t have caved for yet another new flavor she hasn’t tried yet— she can finally sit down and put her feet up.

She flips the TV on to _The Good Place,_ a show Anna got her way too invested in. (She’s scrolled through the fanfic archives for it a few times, but always finds a much larger selection of Chidi/Eleanor fics when what she really wants is some good Tahani/Eleanor content.)

Fifteen minutes into an episode she has seen before, her phone rings. A picture of Anna from Christmas a couple years ago pops up on the screen. She had been posing holding a pan of freshly-baked cookies, unaware of Sven about to leap up and knock her over in pursuit of the cookies. In the picture, he is just barely visible, a brown blur partially cut off in the edge of the image.

“Hey!” Anna says immediately when Elsa picks up. If words could physically smile and bounce up and down, that’s exactly what hers would be doing. “How’ve you been, sis? I miss you so much. But you already knew that!”

Elsa snorts and reaches to mute the TV. “I’m fine. How—”

“Honestly, I’m still amazed you get decent reception at all up there. Don’t you live up on a mountain or something?” 

Unphased by the interruption, Elsa smoothly replies, “Yep. High up on a mountain. All the better to be far away from other people.”

Her sister laughs. “Oh, right. Of course. How silly of me to forget!” There’s a pause, and it goes on for long enough that Elsa’s about to ask what’s the matter. But then Anna says, “So... I have some news for you.”

“News?”

“Well, um... okay, you know what, I’m just gonna say it. Ready?”

Elsa has a feeling the pep talk is more for Anna than for her, so she says nothing and waits.

“Okay. I’m— I’m engaged, Els. Kristoff proposed.” She breaks into a joyful giggle, dissolving anything else coherent she might’ve been planning to say. “It just... it happened so fast, and I don’t mean fast like our relationship because we’ve been together almost three years, no, I mean the proposal... like one minute we were just out walking on the trail, then the next Sven started barking and getting excited for no reason, and then he was down on one knee! Kristoff was— _Kristoff_ was on his knee, I mean, not Sven. Dogs don’t have knees, or at least... I don’t think they do? But _anyway!_ All that happened and I said yes and I _definitely_ cried way too much and this bicyclist gave us a weird look— but Elsa, we’re _engaged!_ I’m engaged to the most amazing man on the planet. It’s just... I’m at a loss for words, honestly.”

Elsa sits there, blinking rapidly as she takes it all in. In an effort to battle her own shock, she teases, “You sure you’re at a loss for words? Because you just said a _lot_ of them.”

“Oh, shush!” Anna says. “Seriously, Els. Are you... how do you feel about this? I know it might seem like it came out of nowhere.”

In all honesty, somewhere deep in Elsa’s gut, something has been prodding her for a while now, telling her this would be coming up soon. The two of them have been living together for a year now, after all. Last month when she FaceTimed her sister for a few hours, Kristoff appeared on the screen several times, walking past in the background and when he was ordered to “entertain” Elsa while Anna took a quick bathroom break. Kristoff has became the brother Elsa never had, just as she’s sure he views her as the sister his only child heart always yearned for. Needless to say, they’ve become comfortable with each other. So seeing Kristoff sitting in front of her practically dripping sweat in November, dodging her gaze, instantly made her suspicious. He’d also mentioned talking a lot with their parents recently, which was also strange. Yes, those were vague clues, but Elsa was still expecting him to whip out a diamond ring right then and there.

And, well, now she knows her instinct was right all along.

“How I feel about it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re happy and it feels right—”

“But how you feel _does_ matter to me, Els,” Anna protests. “Of course _I’m_ ecstatic over this— I’ve never felt this way about anyone before. So I know it’s right, it’s a match well made. But I still wanna know what you think, since you always have such a methodical approach to things.”

Elsa slouches back in her couch cushions, staring at the silenced commercials on her TV (if only those could be banned in Vermont along with billboards), and wishes she had a cat curled on her lap to pet. “If you’re asking whether I think you guys are rushing things, then... no. You’re not. It’s good timing— you’re settled into your job and he just got promoted at his. I mean, it’s not like you’re... pregnant, right?”

Silence.

_“Right?_ Anna, don’t tell me—”

Her sister’s giggles tumble into Elsa’s ear, and instantly she relaxes her tensed shoulders. “No, no, I’m not. Sorry, I couldn’t resist messing with you for a sec.”

“Dammit. Don’t scare me like that.” Elsa smooths back some flyaway wisps from her forehead and sighs. “Anyway, as I was saying, you and Kristoff are _not_ rushing things. Besides, you’re twenty-six and he’s, what, thirty? I think you’re both mature enough to know good from bad.”

“Okay, okay. You’re right,” Anna says. “I guess there’s just... one more thing that’s bothering me.”

“Which is?”

The words rush out of Anna’s mouth. “His last name.” Then she’s swift to explain herself. “It’s just— his last name is a _lot,_ y’know? Kinda unwieldy. Going from Anna Winter to Anna Bjorgman is... _ugh._ And hyphenating it just sounds ridiculous. It’s so bad, I can’t even say it aloud.”

Elsa shakes her head. Leave it to her sister to make lemons out of lemonade. (That’s normally an Elsa thing to do— Anna must be picking up some of her mannerisms.) “Then don’t take his last name.”

“Oh, great idea!” Anna responds. Elsa can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic or not; that’s getting harder to detect as they get older. “No, but the problem is... I _do_ want to take his name. At the very least so I have the same last name as our kids. It’s gonna be annoying, but I’ll have to get used to it.” She changes the subject to the very next thing plaguing Elsa’s mind. “Soooo... you’ll be coming home soon for Christmas and your birthday, and you’ll get to see my ring! I’ll text you a pic of it for now, but trust me, it’s better in person. And keep in mind, you’ll have to clear your schedule sometime soon for our engagement party... we’re thinking maybe February.”

Elsa suppresses a chuckle, something she feels would be insensitive now. “You’re planning that already?”

“Of course!”

* * *

Every single time her car chugs up the nearly vertical road to Arendelle, Elsa passes two ski supply shops. The one closer to her house is enormous, overly commercialized in a way that makes it look out of place and not very Vermont-friendly. Neon-colored posters boasting sales with various percentages off full price cover the windows, and the paved parking lot is always full of mud-splattered Subarus with fancy roof racks. 

The other shop is a little farther down the mountain, and it’s easy to miss. The weather today is mild, so when Elsa develops cabin fever some hours after her call with Anna, she decides to go back out for a joyride around the ribbon roads and icy trees. As her trusty metal steed steadily descends the mountain, her headlights fall on a swinging wooden sign she hadn’t noticed before: _Northuldra Ski Supply. Family Owned & Operated Since 1983. _ Elsa slows down so she can read the carved words, and notices a hefty pile of snow under the sign, which is still partially caked with white. It’s like someone only just noticed the sign was buried and finally brushed it off— that might be why she hasn’t noticed it before.

Curiosity reels her in, and she is helpless but to follow. Elsa makes the right turn onto a bumpy, narrow gravel path lined with frosted weeds and long, swaying tendril-like grasses. The road is short, but the little building is just far enough away from the main road to be easily missable. As she approaches the shop, Elsa squints at the door and catches the open sign hanging there, illuminated from behind by a warm orange light. The parking lot is empty save for one ancient station wagon, likely the owner’s car. _They might as well rename the place Constantly Overlooked Ski Supply,_ Elsa thinks as she swings her car into a space facing the building, which looks like it’s constructed of Lincoln Logs.

As soon as she walks up the hastily-shoveled wooden steps to the door, however, nervous teeth bite at her stomach. What if the person who runs this store is an old creep and there’s a good reason all the locals avoid it? Elsa rushes through the thought process, though, shaking her head until the worry falls out her ears. No, she’s going to go in there and be confident and ask questions. After all, Elsa moved into a cottage that’s on a mountain owned by a ski resort, and just miles from her house is a popular and beloved area for skiing. What better way to forget what she’s left behind in Harrisburg than to learn a new hobby?

And so, with her mind set in cement, Elsa nudges open the door and steps inside. She is greeted by a blast of warmth as a bell on the door weakly jingles above her. It reminds her of the bell on Olaf’s collar, and her heart aches for a moment. She stands, stomping the snow off her boots and taking in her surroundings. The shop is tiny, with dusty shelves crammed in close to one another not unlike the cramped arrangement in Elsa’s freezer. 

She shuffles deeper inside and chooses a random aisle, running her hands along a neatly arranged assortment of outdoor camping essentials. These things are relatively untouched since camping is more of a summer activity around here for obvious reasons. She moves on to the back of the store, where different types and brands of skis, snowboards, and snowshoes are set up. It’s a meager selection, but framed in the warm light and well-polished, it’s clearly well taken care of and not as dusty as the rest of the store. 

Elsa walks up to the front counter, which seems abandoned, and looks through jars of goods from local vendors. Individually wrapped maple candies, paintings of Sugarbush Mountain on miniature canvases, fridge magnets made from local pine wood. She can’t help but appreciate the basic, down-to-earth dustiness of this place— it’s touching. _This_ is what Vermont is supposed to be about, or so she’s heard. Small businesses supporting each other, almost everything made in state, and the nearest Wal-Mart miles and miles down the highway. (Not to mention there’s only one Target store in the entire state— Anna would go crazy.)

Lost in her thoughtful appreciation, Elsa doesn’t notice someone finally emerge from the back office until that someone is standing right on the other side of the counter. 

“Hello!” a cheerful voice says. The tone lands somewhere between Anna-level energetic and calm and relaxed. Elsa’s never thought of a voice being like honey before, but this voice is exactly that— warm honey wrapped around her neck and shoulders like a scarf. Or is that warmth from the blushing? _No, no. You’re not blushing,_ she tells herself. _You better not be blushing._

Startled, Elsa drops the pewter keychain she’d been looking at and glances at the girl in front of her. She’s just a hair shorter than Elsa’s 5’7” with glossy brunette hair woven into twin braids that trail neatly past both shoulders. Her red and tan flannel shirt sleeves are partially rolled up, revealing muscular arms that could rival Kristoff’s and wrists covered in colorful, intricately plaited bracelets. (And this is all Elsa’s able to absorb in just thirty awkward seconds.)

When no acknowledgement is given, the girl frowns and says, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Is there... anything I can help you find?”

“Um, no. I’m, uh, just browsing. Thank you, though!” Elsa says, rushing through each sentence in order to stave off any further embarrassment. She barely hears the girl’s mutter of “Oh, okay.” Way too quickly, she spins around and chooses a random aisle to disappear into because leaving right now would just look bad. Elsa’s eyes dart all around, desperately searching for some object to snag onto. At last she manages to busy herself pretending to examine a package of firestarters. Her hiding place provides a sliver of a view to the front desk, and every few seconds Elsa’s gaze flicks back to where the girl is, tidying things up behind the counter. The thought of speaking with her again, and making _eye contact_ with those tempting hazel eyes, makes Elsa’s stomach twist into a hopeless pretzel. Great, now she messed up her chances of ever patronizing this place again. Looks like she’ll have to go to the big ugly store to buy her skiing gear from now on.

Elsa gradually makes her way to the exit, but before she leaves she pauses one more time to look over the skis, and once again that feather-light voice perches itself on her shoulder.

“You a first-timer?”

This time, Elsa does better concealing her surprise. She clasps her hands tightly, sparing the stranger half a glance and nodding. “Uh, yeah. How did you know?”

The girl’s eyes wander over her, and for the tiniest moment Elsa wonders how it would feel if the girl’s hands were roaming her body instead. At that thought, Elsa mentally kicks herself and shoves _that_ idea deep into the folds of her stupid brain. Stupid, stupid, stupid. _You can’t think things like that about someone you just met!_

“Well, you have a scarf instead of a neckwarmer. And you’re not wearing a waterproof jacket. Those are better because it stays lightweight and doesn’t weigh you down when it’s soaked.” She stifles a laugh as her gaze lands on Elsa’s feet. “And the Uggs— again with the waterproof thing.”

“What’s the big deal? They’re still boots,” Elsa can’t help objecting.

Something mischievous flashes in the girl’s eyes and she lifts her hands in playful surrender. “Alright, alright. I’m just saying, on the mountain, delicate suede boots like those don’t count. And, of course, I was going to say you have the most overwhelmed look on your face. You’re not from around here, are you?”

Elsa swallows. Overwhelmed is definitely the correct word to describe her at the moment, but it’s not for the reason Hazel Eyes might think. Somewhat beaten down by the girl’s critical assessment, Elsa shrugs and stares at the skis instead of the girl. “Um... no, I’m not. But I _am_ here to stay, I’m not just a tourist.”

“Hmm... you’re here to stay?” the girl hums, stepping closer. “Good, because you have a _lot_ to learn.”

Elsa suppresses an aggravated huff, watching as the girl leans alarmingly close to her. For a heart-thudding second, she thinks she’s going to do something _way_ out of line, but then Elsa realizes she was just bending down to pick up a ski helmet off one of the lower shelves.

“Let’s start with this guy, _then_ work our way down to the skis,” she tells her, gently bouncing the helmet in her hands like a basketball.

Elsa knows it’s getting late. She knows she could leave now, and not embarrass herself in front of this pretty stranger any more than she already has. She knows this, and yet she nods and she stays, listening to everything pouring out of this alluring ski expert’s mouth. Elsa’s caught in a web that she honestly doesn’t mind being trapped in.

“I never got your name,” the girl says several minutes later at the register. Elsa only decides to buy a few supplies, choosing to follow the girl’s advice to rent her skis from the resort for her first couple times down the slope.

“Oh, right,” Elsa laughs, hating how it sounds. “I’m Elsa. Elsa Winter.”

The girl smirks at her as she packs Elsa’s things into a bag. “Winter, huh? What a nice frosty name.”

“Frosty?”

In response, the stranger tugs at her braids, then motions to Elsa’s hair. “The platinum hair checks out, too. And the pale skin. It’s like you’re made of ice.”

Elsa knows that can’t be true, because the fierce tingly blush stinging the back of her neck says otherwise. “Right,” she chuckles. “And what’s your name?”

“Maren,” the girl says, and leaves it at that. She pushes Elsa’s bag across the counter to her. “See you around the slopes, Frosty.”

Elsa stumbles back out to her car, suddenly feeling the urge to throw away her ill-suited boots and coat. She settles down in the driver’s seat, fastening her fingers on the steering wheel and leaning her forehead against it. She squeezes her eyes shut and tries, tries, _tries_ to wipe Maren’s narrowed eyes and cool smirk from her mind. But that’s the problem about living up here— it’s so free and open that there’s so little to think about. And how can Elsa _not_ think about her? She’s completely and utterly wonderful.

After a few minutes of calming herself, Elsa leans back and tries to move her hands from the wheel— but her fingers are sealed to the surface with a thin layer of ice.


	3. saturday, february 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i wrote this chapter instead of working on essays for my finals... oops
> 
> anyways i swear next chapter will be full of elsamaren interaction!! i just really love writing elsa and anna's sister dynamic too. thanks for reading <3 <3

we made a garden of the love we found

\- the head and the heart, "honeybee"

* * *

The first time Elsa attempts skiing, it’s an utter disaster. She begins the day cautiously eager, stumbling around in her rental skis. She ends the day with a faceplant in the snow (her hundredth of the afternoon) and a bitter instructor, his patience worn as thin as the receding hair under his ski helmet, standing over her with crossed arms and a cold, critical appraisal in his beady eyes.

A few minutes later, she ends up back in her car, flinging off her snow-crusted hat and gloves. It’s only when she’s pulled back into the gravel driveway beside Arendelle that she notices a light coating of frost halfway up the passenger door. Perplexed, Elsa leans over and runs her fingertips over it, but her touch does nothing to disturb the dusting of white. If anything, it makes the frost more solid, until it closely resembles a sheet of ice smoothly clinging onto the uneven surface. When she pulls back and turns to her left, she finds her own door is also blanketed in this stuff. It’s not _that_ cold outside, is it? Besides, she just had the heat on in the car, and though the engine is off now the warmth still lingers in the cabin.

Trembling, Elsa kicks open her door, and the stuff that should be an illusion shatters all over the ground like shards of glass. She jumps over the mess, barely remembering to slam the door and lock the car behind her as she jogs up to the house.

Her bedroom looks like a train whipped through it at a high speed more than once, throwing open all the drawers and closet doors. Her suitcase sits tauntingly on her unmade bed, and considering Elsa’s flight leaves in less than twelve hours, it’s empty when it should be stuffed to the gills. She throws herself down amongst it and the sloppily-folded clothes strewn about, tangled in her blankets. Right about now, she would much rather face that surly ski instructor again than return south. She misses her sister, but Anna is Anna, and Anna asks questions— too many questions.

She lies there for several minutes, willing her body to sink and be absorbed by the mattress below her. It doesn’t take long for her to notice the chill that falls over the room; she’d shrugged off her heavy coat and kicked off her boots at the door, leaving her in a thin undershirt, jeans with stockings beneath, and socks still damp from the outdoors.

Dread scraping her stomach hollow, Elsa sits up with a creak of protest from her aching limbs. Sure enough, there the frost is again, creeping along the baseboards. It takes its time gnawing away at her bedroom walls, fighting the thermostat to maintain an indoor winter.

“What,” Elsa grumbles, snatching a rumpled pillow and hugging it to her chest, “the _fuck.”_

She can’t really explain why or how the next few things happen. All she knows is one second, she’s sleepwalking back into the pile of wet outerwear she left in the mudroom, and the next she’s once again sitting in her parked car in the parking lot of Northuldra Ski Supply. She steps outside, and one foot immediately plunges into a murky puddle of slush and gravel, but she doesn’t pay any mind to the discomfort. She’s partway up the front steps when she hears someone calling out and the crunch of another set of tires eating up grit.

Elsa freezes and watches a full-size pickup truck pull into the lot, its dark blue flanks rendered white by road salt. The driver’s side window is rolled down, an arm hanging out of it, and a few moments later a familiar face pops out to join the arm.

“Hey!” Maren yells. Elsa has never known a voice to stay so serene while at a high volume. She watches the other woman ease the large, grunting vehicle into a space on the other side of the beaten-up station wagon. She hops out, and still Elsa watches. Maren waves, and her jacket slips down her arm slightly so a hint of flannel sleeve can peek out. The wave is a beckon, and Elsa floats back down the stairs and over to where this near-stranger is unloading things from the truck bed.

Once Elsa reaches her, Maren pauses in her work to lean against the side of the pickup. That smirk is back on her face, the kind that makes Elsa feel ticklish even though Maren’s hands are nowhere near her. Elsa observes the drooping zipper on her padded North Face coat, and the edge of a blue and green shirt collar poking through from underneath. The double plaits she wore before, last time, the only other time Elsa has seen her (and the only way Elsa has been able to picture her in her mind and in one— just one— dream), have been combined and replaced by a single thick braid that falls neatly down her back.

“Long time no see,” Maren remarks. “Elsa, right?”

“Yeah. Yep. That’s me,” Elsa says. “I’m Elsa.” _Stop talking. Stop talking._

A quirk forms in Maren’s brow, but it smooths out before Elsa can make anything of it. She turns back to the packages bundled in the back of the truck and resumes taking them out. “So,” she says, “what brings you back to my lonely little alcove in the mountain?”

Elsa stares at her back and tries not to imagine the ripple of muscle she would see there if it weren’t for that damn coat. “Oh, just, uh... thought I should pay another visit.” She chews on her lip, desperate to grasp onto another subject to talk about. “You know, I- I thought that old car was yours,” she says, gesturing to the decaying Subaru nearby. “Didn’t think you drove a big... truck.”

“Hm?” Maren turns back to her, eyes darting from Elsa to the aforementioned car. “What, you think I can’t handle this big guy?” A glint appears in her eyes, turned amber by the mellow afternoon sun. “That day you were here... my aunt Yelena must’ve been borrowing my truck. The wagon is hers.” She pauses, facial features slipping into a studious frown. Elsa shifts her weight, feeling the hot laser-like gaze skimming over her. “Wanna know something?” Maren asks suddenly.

“What?”

She leans against the truck and pats it affectionately. “I call him my babe magnet.” Below her coat, Elsa’s skin is slick with sweat, and her palms are tacky as she wipes them on her jeans again and again. She can tell Maren notices all this— Maren, who seems to enjoy making Elsa squirm. “Can I ask you something else?”

Elsa toes the mucky gravel and wonders if that frost will come back and start eating away at her. She could go for being encased in some enigmatic ice right about now. She simply looks at the cute girl from the ski shop, the person who has infested her mind since December, and nods.

“Is it working?” Maren’s hand taps the truck a couple times again to indicate the ulterior motives she has with it. “‘Cause it seems like it’s working.”

Elsa would say her heart is crawling up her throat, or in her stomach, but she’s pretty sure it’s left her body entirely. She feels frozen. She gawks at Maren like she’s a work of art in a fancy museum, and she wants to know everything. She wants to know Maren’s favorite color, she wants to know her favorite thing to cook, the movie she has to watch at least three times a year.

She wants to know Maren’s last _name,_ for the sake of her sanity.

Elsa opens her eyes and blinks down at her knees, which are pressed into the airplane seat in front of her. She groans and leans her head back, rolling her stiff shoulders. If she wants to learn more, she can’t rely on what little information her mind has hoarded. Dreams won’t help.

* * *

To give her ailing car a break from long drives, Elsa had decided to take an easy, hour-and-a-half flight down to Philadelphia from the airport in Burlington. Scoring a quick and easy flight on a dirt-cheap plane ticket definitely beats a seven-hour drive, but of course there’s still the roughly two-hour trip back home to Harrisburg from Philly— and this is where Elsa is currently trapped, deep within the throes of an unwanted singalong session in Anna’s car.

The only CD her sister used to own was the soundtrack to the first _Mamma Mia!_ movie, which is basically a compilation of pitchy covers of ABBA songs. Then the sequel came out, and now the _Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again_ soundtrack is the only CD Anna will play in her car... again and again and again.

“Look into his angel eyes, one look and you’re hypnotized,” Anna hums, drumming her fingers on the steering wheel. They take the closest highway exit to Anna and Kristoff’s house and come to a stop at a red light. She takes this opportunity to lean over and nudge Elsa with her elbow, urging her to join in.

“No, no,” Elsa sighs, barely able to hear herself over the music. “My throat is sore.”

Anna frowns, but doesn’t object and resumes following along, miming Christine Baranski’s mannerisms as if she’s auditioning for the role of Tanya herself. “He’ll take your heart and you must pay the price...”

Elsa can’t deny her sister’s genuine talent for singing; it’s difficult for anyone else to talk down upon, either. Anna landed a lead role in _Grease_ her freshman year, and continued playing the prettiest, perkiest leads all throughout high school. To say she peaked in high school and college would be an understatement, but she’s also one of the lucky people who has continued to march along at the top of the mountain of life with no signs of coming down. Elsa can’t say the same, but she’s fine being a close admirer from the sidelines.

After a quick stop at the grocery store to pick up the ingredients for chocolate peppermint cookies (a famous Winter family recipe), they at last pull into the driveway behind Kristoff’s new-ish black Jeep Cherokee. Anna is still glowing from a compliment she received at the store about her engagement ring. Elsa’s little sister is larger than life, but maybe there’s finally something that outshines even her— and that ring certainly does catch light from all angles.

Sven is right at the door to greet them when they enter the house. He paces up and down the small foyer, his tail swooping back and forth, fluffy and immense like an eagle’s wing and slamming into walls and legs and other things. Elsa leans down to receive a faceful of welcoming licks, then right after hears a familiar bell jingling frantically. She looks at her feet and finds Olaf has already wrapped himself around her, serving as a breathing, fluffy leg warmer. “Oh, my baby,” Elsa gushes, picking up the white cat and cuddling him close to her chest. “I missed you so much.”

“Aw, Elsa! I missed you too,” Kristoff says. A chuckle follows his teasing words as he steps into the crowded entryway. Elsa holds Olaf with one arm and uses her other to drag her sister’s fiance into a crooked hug.

It takes nearly twenty minutes, but Elsa eventually finds her other furry son cooped up in the guest room upstairs. “Well, hello,” she says, folding back the blanket Bruni burrowed into. “It’s like you’ve been expecting me.” She starts to pet him, but the elusive gray and black tabby promptly hops off the bed and slithers out of the room with a growl of annoyance. “Okay,” Elsa sighs after him. “I’ll catch up with you later.”

She sets up her things in the small room, then heads back downstairs to the kitchen where Anna is already stirring up the dough for the first batch of cookies. Kristoff is close beside her at the stove, flipping over a grilled cheese sandwich. Elsa wants to offer her assistance, but as she sits at the counter and watches them, she can’t help but admire the system the two of them have going. They step around each other, hands touching the small of backs, lips brushing necks, working like a well-oiled machine. Elsa doesn’t wish to intrude on that. She can only imagine sharing something like that with someone else.

“So the party starts at five,” Anna says, somehow sensing her sister’s entrance without needing to turn around. “Mom told me to just make the cookies, and that she has everything else covered. Whatever that means.”

“I’m surprised she asked you to bring anything in the first place,” Elsa says. “It’s _your_ party, after all.”

“Well, my version of the family recipe is the best, so,” Anna responds tartly. Elsa suppresses a snicker; her sister always gets so serious when she’s in baking mode. “And besides, if the party is at our parents’ house, then it’s technically _Mom’s_ party, no matter who it’s for. You know how she is, Els.”

Elsa nods. She’s known Allison Winter for twenty-one years of her life, so by now she’s definitely familiar with how the woman takes over any room she’s in. She’s similar to Anna like that, but not in the best way. And anyway, if they don’t share blood, how similar could they _really_ be? (The cookies aren’t even _their_ family recipe; it’s the _Winter_ family recipe.) Elsa pushes the thought away and pretends to read the junk catalogs Kristoff brought in with the mail.

* * *

A few hours later, they pile into Kristoff’s SUV. Elsa dressed herself in a mulberry-colored sweater dress for the occasion, but it’s a bit scratchy and she shifts uncomfortably in the backseat. Next to her are three saran-wrapped plates of chocolate peppermint cookies which stare her down, reminding Elsa constantly that the cookies belong to the _Winters,_ not to her, not to Anna. She swallows hard and watches out the frosty window as they back away from the warmth and light that is Kristoff and Anna’s home. 

They live in a medium-sized, cabin-like house nestled on a sprawling acreage of forest, not far from the remote road where they first met. Kristoff is a true man of the woods; almost always dressed roughly in worn jeans and a flannel, he claims he keeps his hair longer so his ears stay warm when he’s outside, which is about 75% of the time. Anna calls him her “lumberjack,” which is a fair assessment because he does literally chop wood with an ax to use in their old-fashioned fireplace. Seeing her future brother-in-law now, dressed up in a blue button down without a patch of denim anywhere on his body, definitely feels off.

Jared and Allison Winter live about ten miles away in a well-to-do neighborhood. It’s a short drive out of the woods and through the town center. According to Anna, they’ve only ever set foot in her and Kristoff’s home once or twice. They say they miss Elsa’s cats, but they turn up their noses at Sven’s excitable demeanor and slobbery kisses. 

Too soon, they roll to stop along the curb in front of a house where silver and white balloons are tied to the plastic mailbox. Elsa has admittedly gotten lost in this neighborhood before despite spending most of her childhood living in it; it’s easy to get turned the wrong way in this maze of cookie-cutter homes. If it weren’t for the balloons and _“Congrats Chris + Anna!”_ sign in the front yard, Elsa certainly wouldn’t be able to pick out the Winter residence from any other house in the neighborhood.

Kristoff kicks open his door, takes one look at his misspelled name, and only gives a wordless headshake. Anna shrugs helplessly at him and circles around to get the cookies from the backseat. Anna told her sister once that one of the first things she and Kristoff bonded over was the fact that they’re both adopted. Kristoff’s situation was a bit more lucky, as lucky as any situation like that can get. He was born to a teen mother who refused to hold him or even look at him. Being given up as a baby made it easier to be taken in by a new family, because babies are adorable and have no memory or knowledge of the losses they’ve experienced in such a short time. Babies are still malleable, untouched yet by the world’s cruelty.

Elsa has only been a Winter since she was eight, and Anna since she was five. Their birth parents died in a car accident, the details of which Elsa decided she never wanted to know. Drunk driver, distracted driver, an act of God, a pure fluke— she doesn’t need specifics. It _happened,_ and there’s no reversing that. What she does know is Jared and Allison Winter saw Anna first when they walked into the foster home where the girls were being held. They saw Anna, they wanted Anna, then Elsa stepped into the room from where she had been hiding around the corner, and because sisters shouldn’t be separated, they had to take Elsa too. Anna was easy; she has no memory of their birth parents. Elsa was not.

They walk up to the house, ring the doorbell, and are ushered inside by their adoptive mother. Inside the house must be warm, Elsa assumes, but she still feels cold. Reluctantly she hands her jacket to her father to be taken upstairs and out of the way. She walks deeper inside, to the kitchen where people stand around the island and pick at finger foods. The party is pretty intimate, only close friends and “family” invited. Elsa forces smiles at faces she kind of recognizes, hugs people she feels like she barely knows.

It’s a couple hours later when her mother finally pounces on the chance to corner her elder daughter. The five of them are sitting in a ragged circle in the living room, hushed Adele playing from a speaker in the corner. Elsa nibbles at a stale grocery store brownie off a paper plate and vaguely listens.

“I’m still in awe of how much my girls have grown up,” says Allison.

_Her_ girls? Elsa holds back a sneer.

“I mean— Elsa, love, at the end of the year you’ll be thirty. I don’t want you to be lonely, you know.”

That’s enough to prompt Elsa to excuse herself. She marches out of the room, smushing her plate into the overflowing garbage can, and moves so fast she practically walks directly through the glass front door without opening it first. She wishes it would slam behind her, but it’s the fancy kind of door that closes gradually, softly. She sits down on the bottom step next to the paved driveway, staring out over the frost-tinged grass and all the cars parked up and down the street for the party.

Anna is out there sitting next to her before she can blink twice. Her sister takes a moment to settle herself, smoothing her hands over the hem of her cute patterned dress. Her fingernails are painted a matte orange to match the tiny citrine stones that surround the diamond in her ring, resembling a flower.

Then she murmurs, “I’m sorry... this is all my fault.”

Elsa stares at her, wondering how the hell anything could possibly be Anna’s fault. She can’t help the way she grew up— the way they grew up.

“They’re being like this be- because I got engaged before you, as if it’s a competition, which it’s not—”  
“You don’t understand,” Elsa cuts in. She shakes her head slowly, and the laugh that escapes her leaves a bitter tang at the bottom of her throat. “You always make everything about you. It’s _always_ about you. This has nothing to do with your engagement.”

Anna’s face hardens; Elsa’s has already turned into stone. “No... you’re the one who doesn’t understand,” her sister argues. “I’m on your side, Els. You just can’t look up from where you’re hanging your head so glumly all the time! Yeah, tonight _was_ meant to celebrate me, me and Kristoff, but you wanna know something? Every time I spoke with Mom tonight, or Dad, they only talked about you. It’s always _you,_ Elsa, you’re the one they worry about.” She severs eye contact, turning her head to stare out at the banner flapping in the nippy breeze. “Because _you’re_ the one who brooded and moped, and _yes,_ rightfully so since you were more affected by our other parents’ deaths. You remember them so much,” she sniffles, dabbing at her eyes with her sleeve, _“too_ much, in place of what I fail to remember.”

Elsa’s heart slams at her ribcage. “Anna—” Her throat stings. “Don’t... you _can’t_ call them our _other_ parents, they were our _real—”_ But Anna steamrolls over what she was planning to say, which is good because Elsa isn’t sure what direction that sentence was going in.

“So they worry and worry and worry about you, and smile and cheer for me on the sidelines ‘cause I’m the happy, sunny, cheerleader... but they mostly care about _you,_ Elsa, you and your game.” Anna swings her head back over, her pretty face screwed up in a scowl that drills into Elsa’s soul. “Don’t you ever say it’s all about me. I was the easy one—”

“— and I’m the troubled, interesting project child,” Elsa finishes for her. Her voice is paper thin, marked only with tired resignation. “I’m well aware.”

Anna gazes at her, jaw working furiously. Then she looks down at the ground, hugging her knees to her chest. “So... if you’re well aware, is that why you ran away to Vermont? To escape them?”

Angry heat fills Elsa’s cheeks. “I didn’t run away,” she snaps. _I’m here right now, aren’t I?_ But when she tries to add something, _anything,_ after that, her mind goes blank.

The sisters share a couple minutes of silence, two very different minds stewing over a singular situation. Elsa closes her eyes and imagines walking into a constantly overlooked ski supply shop, buying a couple of maple candies as a cover for the real reason she’s there—

A pair of warm arms wrap around Elsa, and her eyes spring open. Anna’s arms are like a weighted blanket over her shoulders, pulling her in closer and relaxing her.

“I’m your built-in best friend,” Anna mutters into Elsa’s shoulder. “You can’t get rid of me that easily. So _talk_ to me, Els, whenever you need it.” She leans back and meets Elsa’s gaze with big, solemn blue eyes. “Promise you’ll talk to me?”

“I promise,” Elsa sighs.

Anna stands and tugs at Elsa’s arm until she’s also on her feet. “Let’s go back in there, tell them we have to leave early ‘cause we need to feed the furbabies, and go back home and drink hot cocoa and watch _Moana.”_

Elsa smiles at her sister, and feels the love pulsing behind her ribs. “How about _Ratatouille?”_ she suggests.

“Ugh. Fine,” Anna says. “Now come on.”


	4. wednesday, march 4

why don't you change me at all costs?

\- bleachers, "let's get married"

* * *

By now, Elsa has grown accustomed to the little bumps and dips in the short road that curves through the trees to Northuldra Ski Supply. After making the turn, she slows her speed as her tired old car shudders over an unavoidable pothole; then she gently swerves around a place where the path has been gnawed away at by a crumbling snowdrift.

She arrives at the parking lot enveloped in evergreen, and the Honda limps into its usual space facing the weather-lashed side of the building. Elsa is mildly surprised to spot another car in the lot besides the station wagon and Maren’s truck. However, her curious thoughts are drowned out by the deafening noise that comes from her car’s engine as she shuts it off. It sounds like a deep, guttural groan of exhaustion. As much as Elsa can empathize with that, she also doesn’t want to worry about it right this moment— so brushes it off and hopes she’ll be able to get home later.

Stepping inside, Elsa is greeted with the usual fusion of warmth, dust, and orange light. The musty scent, underlaid with pine, settles into Elsa’s nostrils and she draws in a contented breath, not wanting to let it go anytime soon. But then her eyes land on Maren leaning on the counter talking to a customer, and that breath rushes out of her lungs before she can stop it.

Maren notices Elsa seconds after Elsa sees her; she stands taller as Elsa approaches. She can’t help but make a mental note on how disinterested Maren suddenly seems in her conversation. Hazel shards flick back and forth from the other person to Elsa, then once Elsa is standing right in front of her, Maren is quick to excuse herself from the customer.

Maren’s smooth-as-silk voice (isn’t it always that way?) contradicts the way her arms cross stiffly over her chest. “Hey, Snowbird,” she hums, scanning Elsa up and down the way she always does. Elsa used to prepare for a critical assessment of her clothing choices whenever Maren made that look, but she figures by now she must look Vermont-friendly— so now there’s a different reason those eyes wander.

“Hi,” Elsa says. “How’ve you been?”

“Good,” Maren replies. “You?” She grins at Elsa, not glancing away from her for a second. Her eyes add, _Better, since you walked in._ Or maybe that’s just what Elsa wants to think.

She nods a bit too rapidly. “Yep, same. I am... also good.” She bites back a grimace and shifts her weight from one boot to the other. _Damn it, can you function like a normal human for just one conversation? Just one!_ Using her conscience to plead to herself won’t help matters much— she knows this. But it is painfully obvious how this exchange with the Very Pretty Ski Expert is becoming a callback to middle school text conversations. Elsa is dragging Anna’s cringey, emoticon-infested messages back out of the grave they’re buried in along with the pink Motorola RAZR flip phone they were typed on.

However, her sister’s texting habits _have_ greatly evolved from sending _“heyyyy how r u”_ to thoughtless boys in her class. (Not to undermine Anna’s fairly solid skills for a mid-2000s teen; most of the time she would receive the answer _“cool”_ to the above text, which she would then reply to with _“not 2 kewl 4 me i hope ;)”)_

 _That_ information won’t help Elsa now, though. Instead she takes a moment to reflect on the chat she had with Anna before she left Harrisburg a couple weeks ago.

_“So you like someone! Right...? Oh my god, you do! Who is it?”_

_“It’s... not a big deal.”_

_“Oh, c’mon, you gotta spill!”_

_“Anna, please—”_

_“You promised you would tell me about things in your life, Els.”_

_“I know, and I’ll tell you about it soon. I swear. But for now, could I ask for some advice?”_

_“Advice on...?”_

_“On... getting myself noticed.”_

At that, Anna had flashed her a sly, all-knowing smirk. This is her expertise and her passion— for every flub, she’s had twice as many successes. _“Well, think about how I asked out the person I’m currently engaged to. You were there. Remember how casual I was?”_

_“Casual? Right.”_

_“I was! I mean, I must’ve done something right. Remember, Els— small, ‘subtle’ things can lead to big payoff later down the road.”_

So now here Elsa is, facing the girl who has clearly noticed her, but not noticed her enough. There’s no turning back now; at the mere mention of someone special, Anna is already drawing up vague sketches of people in her mind. Elsa wants to cement this image in her sister’s mind, wants to introduce the two women who are on her mind the most. But then Maren speaks up—

“You know, you come to a ski supply shop a _lot_ for someone who apparently sucks at skiing. Your words, not mine.” Once more, she’s leaning on the counter, elbows perched, eyebrows raised, every inch of her wavering and expectant for a prompt answer. And worst of all, she’s right: since returning to Vermont, Elsa has visited Northuldra way too much but, in her opinion, still hasn’t talked to Maren enough in all those visits. (And if those are contradictory statements, then Elsa doesn’t want to be right.)

Elsa’s heart throbs and she dives right in. “Make me better, then,” she says.

Maren’s shoulders tense, sleeves taut across her built biceps. This must not be the answer she was expecting. A braid slips past her shoulder, and if it’s even possible she leans closer to Elsa over the counter. Elsa wonders what would happen if there wasn’t a counter between them, and this time she doesn’t push the thought away.

“Teach me to ski,” she urges. “Please.” Then, channeling Anna on that dark wooded road three years ago, Elsa produces her phone from her back pocket, unlocks it, and offers it to Maren. “You, uh... you should give me your number. S- so we can keep in touch more easily and, like... make plans.” Wow, she really _is_ mimicking her sister... with some added in stuttering for flair.

Maren chuckles and accepts the phone, thumbs tapping neatly over the screen. “Is this a challenge?”

“If you want it to be,” Elsa replies. She feels like she’s splitting apart a little at the seams, but she pulls herself back together and stands with her chest puffed. “I mean, I only want to learn. How hard can it be?”

After another second, Elsa’s phone is slipped back into her waiting hand. As Maren’s arm retreats, her fingertips ghost along the side of Elsa’s wrist. “Well, Frosty, I’m glad you’re so eager,” says Maren, “because I get off at one and I’ll be free the entire rest of the day.” For the first time, her smirk dissolves into a wider smile, teeth flashing. “March is the best month for skiing up here. I can show you the ropes, then by the time next season rolls around you’ll be well-versed in my language.” She tilts her head as if she’s trying to take in Elsa from every possible angle. “So— are you in?”

“Today?”

“Today.”

Elsa hopes her gulp isn’t audible. Today was the last day she expected this to begin... and having it begin _today_ is not so “subtle,” is it? But she already knows she’s been ensnared since the moment she walked in here, treading those tempting hazel waters. “Okay,” she agrees. “I’ll see you then.”

Maren holds her smile, and Elsa can feel her lips stretching to accommodate her own awkward version of the same; then the former’s face falls slightly, and she asks, “Does it feel colder in here, or is it just me?” She shudders, then chases it with an anxious laugh. “Phew... it’s like the temperature just dropped out of nowhere.” She turns to the guy nearby her who’s wiping the stubborn dust off the counter; he looks about their age, and his big blue eyes splash color harshly at Maren’s warm honey palette. “Ryder, can you go check the thermostat? I think it’s acting up again.”

Ryder sighs, but doesn’t give up the energetic bounce in his gait as he disappears to the back room.

Maren swivels back to Elsa, an apology perched on her face. “Sorry about that,” she says.

 _No,_ Elsa wants to say, _I’m the one who should be sorry._ But... maybe it’s just her way of showing it— whatever “it” is. Cold. And if that frost isn’t creeping along the baseboards of the little shop, then it’s definitely nibbling at the corners of her mind.

* * *

Having a job that functions online means that Elsa works entirely from home, which is super freeing compared to what she previously did for five years. It also means she can make irresponsible last-minute decisions on a whim, decisions that she’ll surely regret later, such as designating today as a day off despite not originally planning it to be one.

Oh well.

Elsa had already woken up this morning feeling like it was going to be an off day motivation-wise. She’d spent maybe thirty minutes sitting in front of her laptop with the morning news droning in the background... then she’d flipped channels and got distracted by the tail-end of _Tangled..._ and then that turned into two episodes of _The Good Place._ And after that she somehow ended up at Northuldra again, figuratively on her knees, and _finally_ she managed to get somewhere with Maren— Maren Whatever-her-last-name-is.

She heaves a sigh, standing in front of the floor-length mirror in her bedroom. She doesn’t understand it— usually she’s so good with this kind of thing. (Meaning the staying focused on her work thing, not this getting dressed for any kind of occasion thing.) And now here she is, distracted as she could possibly be, grasping through empty air for a girl who doesn’t seem quite as out of reach anymore. So maybe this distraction _is_ worth it...

... if _only_ Elsa could figure out what the hell to wear. She knows it’s stupid, because they’ll be outside skiing, all bundled up. This isn’t a fancy dinner date, it’s a rough-and-tumble lesson in the snow. And because of that, Elsa doesn’t think it’s worth it to call Anna and ask for her advice. Besides, her sister is at work right now, lawyering it up like any normal successful human being. Anna wouldn’t necessarily call a recess to dish out some expert fashion tips, but she has been known to duck out of meetings with the blatant excuse “sorry, I gotta vomit” to answer Elsa’s calls before. Still, though, Elsa wants to do this on her own. She feels she owes it to herself, at the very least.

It takes her way too long, but she ends up settling on a cream-colored sweater and jeans which she’ll layer over with heavier garments once there. In the mudroom, she stuffs her twice-socked feet into boots, shoulders on her thick puffy coat, and grabs her bag of supplies. Right as she’s preparing to head out the door, her phone dings.

_Maren: hey, it’s maren from your fave ski shop :) meet me in the north parking lot. see u in a few!_

Elsa sits down in her car and resists the urge to hit her forehead on the steering wheel. She had been all too eager to get going and she hadn’t even gotten a text yet until a minute ago. She really was about to drive off without knowing the meeting place. Her eyes flick to the time on her phone screen: it’s only 12:57 now. Well, great, at least now she has plenty of time to stress about what to say back. 

Her thumbs hover over the little keyboard for too many minutes, her mind offering one poor suggestion after another, all of which are rejected. The cursor stares up at her, each blink a taunt. Then, once the clock hits 1:05, Elsa nips her overthinking in the bud (though it’s more like a fully blossomed flower of worry at this point) and hits send.

_Elsa: Okay, great! See you then._

Shit, maybe she should have added an emoji at the end? Maren included an emoji in hers. Sure, she was probably just trying to come off as casual, but now that means Elsa’s response will come off as curt and... cold.

“Cold” must be her unwanted trademark, then. Awesome. With a groan, she tosses the stupid phone onto the passenger seat and backs out of the narrow driveway.

Elsa’s cottage is roughly halfway up the mountain, and of course the ski lodge is situated at the very top of it, which makes for a roughly five-to-ten minute trip depending on how well the roads are cleared. At this point very early into the spring thaw, conditions aren’t bad at all as Elsa approaches the top. But she only makes it part way there.

The old car gives a wheezy cough and jerks, a telltale plume of smoke curling up from under the hood. _“No!”_ Elsa cries, her stomach dropping. Desperately she smacks the dashboard a few times as if that will magically cure the vehicle’s many ailments. In response to _that,_ she feels the car literally lose the last of its power and begin to drift down the road... the _wrong_ way, as in _literally down the road._

“Dammit, dammit,” she mutters, sounding strangely calm compared to the belly-scraping panic she feels inside. Screw steep roads and screw gravity. Grateful nobody is behind her, she pulls off to the side. The shoulder is nearly non-existent, meaning she’s partially on the grass when she throws the useless hunk of metal into park. Elsa sits there and watches the angry, sooty gray clouds dissolve in the thin air.

A fresh dose of annoyance shoots through her bloodstream, and she gives the underside of the dashboard a hard kick. “Stupid thing! You just _had_ to give up now? Of _all_ times?” Elsa presses back into the headrest, squeezing her eyes shut as her face flushes. “Now, because of _you,_ I’ll have to text Maren and I don’t even wanna think about how embarrassing _that_ will be—”

She’s interrupted by a light tapping on her window. Elsa jumps so high she’s surprised her head doesn’t hit the ceiling. Heat climbing up her neck, she peers out to her left and sees a familiar face plastered with a bemused smile. _Oh, my god._ Of course— the thing about this mountain is there’s pretty much one main road up to the top, not counting certain private shortcuts. Meaning that Maren was bound to come up this way too.

Elsa tries to roll down the window, then with another humiliating pang remembers the car is turned off. Pursing her lips, she kicks open her door and Maren steps back to give her space. “Um...” Elsa says right away, barely able to meet the brunette’s eyes. “Hey?”

“Hey,” Maren says. That charming smirk must be a permanent feature of her face. Elsa has to admit it works _very_ well, maybe _too_ well, even in this situation. Maren hunches her shoulders against the chill and nods her head at the broken down sedan. “I, uh, didn’t know you were so close with your car.”

Elsa blinks dumbly. “What do you mean?”

“I’m just saying, most people I know don’t have full-blown, one-sided conversations with their car,” Maren teases, leaning back against her truck. “But to each their own, I guess.”

The teasing is a little reminiscent of Anna’s clever jabs, though Maren is a bit more merciless. Connecting her words to something her sister or Kristoff might say helps, though, and Elsa is able to throw a playful glare in Maren’s direction. “It wasn’t one-sided,” she insists. “In fact, the car... made a lot of noises. Sounded like this weird grinding, then like a dying animal, but it still counts.” She gives a brittle laugh and shrugs. “Listen, I’m sorry. This literally just happened and I was about to text—”

“Woah, wait, what are you apologizing for? I’m the one who should be saying sorry, I’m making fun of you after your car just broke down.” Maren’s grin softens a little, her pretty features slipping into something more apologetic. “I think Ryder’s rubbing off too much on me. I swear I wasn’t always this mean.”

“Ryder?” Elsa can’t help repeating the same name she’d heard attached to the bright-eyed boy in the shop.

“My brother,” Maren clarifies. “Yeah, he’s the one earlier who acted like I told him to go to hell rather than check the thermostat. His sense of humor is a bit... off-kilter, let’s say. I honestly think he survives on a steady diet of absorbing then repeating dumb things. But anyway.” She pushes off her truck and walks around to the front of Elsa’s car. “May I?”

Elsa nods, leaning back in the car to hit the hood release latch. She walks over and stands beside Maren as she sets up the hood and waves away the smoke. A chilly breeze whistles past, clearing up most of the polluted haze, and when it fades away, Elsa finds her companion leaning over the car’s aged guts, gingerly fiddling around with some things. She can’t deny how attractive it is to see this girl chest-deep under the hood, tongue poking between closed lips as she concentrates. Elsa is glad for the breeze, because she is definitely sweating under her coat. She stands there and watches, then blurts out, “And by the way— you weren’t mean.”

Maren, deep in investigate mode, only spares her half a glance. “Hmm?”

“I just... you weren’t being mean, before. With, uh, making fun of me.” Elsa bites her lip, smooths out the wrinkles in the fabric of her mind, and goes on. “I wasn’t, like, offended or anything. Trust me, I’m used to teasing. I have a sister. She and her fiance can be ruthless sometimes.”

“Really? They sound like fun,” Maren chuckles. “Well, I’m glad I didn’t hurt your feelings, because that would make me feel too bad.” She pauses, squinting at a part, then adds, “Feels like... sometimes I come on a little too strong at first, so... nice to know we’re on the same page.” The corner of her mouth curls up, and though the relieved grin isn’t aimed at her, Elsa catches it anyway and tugs it in close to her chest.

More time passes in silence. Then “Yep. That’s what I thought— blown head gasket,” Maren announces after a few more minutes. She shuffles back and raises her head. “Explains why your engine overheated. It’s common in older model Accords. Should be repairable, though your alternator is looking badly rusted... might wanna get that checked out by a pro. Could explain the, uh... ‘dying animal’ noises.”

“I’m impressed,” Elsa says. “You really know your stuff about cars.”

Maren shrugs humbly. “I don’t know a whole lot, otherwise I’d probably have my own repair shop open by now.” She folds the prop back down, gently closing the hood with one hand. “I always found it interesting, and I’ve fixed my aunt’s old wagon more times than I can count, so I mostly learned that way. That thing’s had so many parts replaced, it’s basically a whole new car.”

“Wish I had some general knowledge, then I might’ve picked up on this sooner and avoided this whole situation.”

At that, Maren narrows her eyes and grins wistfully. “That might be true... but then we wouldn’t be talking here now and learning more about each other.”

Elsa opens her mouth, then closes it. She meets that hazel gaze head-on and her kneecaps become liquid. For a solid thirty seconds, the pair simply stare at each other, searching for some kind of signal to break into this incredible mutual understanding. Elsa doesn’t want to break it, but by now she’s drenched with nervous sweat beneath her jacket so she has to say something. Her mind gropes for a heartbeat or two, then she manages to point lamely at Maren’s hands. “I’m sorry about your hands.”

Maren lifts up her blackened fingers, appearing to notice their grubby state only now. “Oh, this is nothing,” she says. “I don’t mind getting a little dirt on me.” Her eyes snag Elsa’s again, and Elsa _swears_ she sees her wink, but it’s gone in a flash as most winks are.

If they were in a closed room right now, Elsa’s almost sure it would be encased in frost by now. She’s not positive Maren would be as comfortable having frosty fingers as she is with greasy fingers.

* * *

After calling a tow truck, Maren shoots Elsa a curious look and, sounding almost like she felt guilty for even asking, says, “So... are you still up for skiing after all that?”

“Sure, why not?” Elsa replies. Because there is no way this day could get any worse, right?

It’s still not two o’clock yet when they reach the mountain’s peak. Maren swings into a parking space nearby a sign reading “North Parking Lot”— where they were originally supposed to meet, if only Elsa’s car had decided not to die today.

“We have a few hours of daylight left. It’s pretty late in the day to start, but I think you’ll be a quick learner,” Maren explains as they hop out of the truck. She stretches an arm into the slim backseat and grabs her bag. Then she circles around to meet Elsa on the other side with a beam. “Alright, let’s go!”

Elsa keeps her reeling mind busy with idle chatter, luring Maren into a web of painfully boring small talk questions. All she wants is to forget what just happened down the road, and she has a sliver of hope that if she keeps rambling on about things, maybe Maren will put it out of her mind too. Maybe then Elsa’s cheeks will stop feeling like blazing stove burners.

The resort area is fairly quiet, which makes sense considering it’s the middle of the week and close to the end of the season. While Elsa is getting her skis at the rental counter, Maren is telling a story and then, without missing a beat, leans across Elsa to hand the clerk money. Elsa had been holding out her credit card to pay, but Maren effectively shut that down. Elsa stands there dumbstruck, still pinching the plastic card between her thumb and index finger. Then she whirls around, the skis tumbling about awkwardly in her arms, and stammers, “You— what was that for? You didn’t have to do that!”

Maren shrugs at her, unfazed, and leads her outside. “I don’t mind.”

“But— but the rentals aren’t cheap, and you’ve already done a lot for me today, and—”

“Don’t worry about it, Snowbird. Seriously.” 

“Well... thank you.” With a sigh of resignation, Elsa takes a seat on the bench beside her and starts clumsily putting her gear on. While Maren slips naturally into her gear graceful as an ice skater, Elsa feels more like one of those Olympic snowboarders who wipes out badly, then lays there defeated in the snow in front of numerous cameras. She bites back a frustrated groan, not liking how bulky everything feels on her body. How could she ever get used to this? But she says nothing about this to Maren, not wanting to establish herself even more as a fish out of water. The way she’s acting, she might as well have lived in Florida her entire life before coming here. Maybe she should take up a different Vermont pastime instead... like biking. That’s fun, right?

Once they’re all suited up, Maren starts with the basics, showing Elsa how to not waddle awkwardly like a penguin with the skis on. Of course, she still finds a way to topple over face first, filling her goggles with snow. But when Maren helps her back up, Elsa realizes she’s already laughing along with her. It feels good. This isn’t at all like her first attempt with the surly instructor. Unlike that asshole, Maren isn’t even being paid to do this, but it’s her passion... and that brings on a better attitude than money ever could.

Before long Maren has her situated at the top of the bunny hill. “It’s for novice skiers,” Elsa is reassured, “but don’t underestimate it. It’s still easy enough to go too fast if you’re not in control.”

So down they go. Elsa moves so slowly, she isn’t even sure she’s moving at first. Her eyes are shut out of fear, and when they pop back open she’s at the bottom and Maren is grinning at her, eyes bright through her goggles.

“Well? How was it?” she asks, picking her way through the distance between them.

“I... it’s like I teleported,” Elsa admits. She knows it’s not the right answer, because shouldn’t there be actual _feeling_ to it? Shouldn’t she have registered the wind rushing in her face, burning her cheeks and ruffling her hair? Shouldn’t there have been _more?_

But then she’s gifted with another signature smirk from her mentor. “That’s good. It means you’re doing something right. It’s a different experience for everyone... and it only gets more exhilarating the higher and steeper a slope goes.” Maren reaches to brush a few clumps of snowflakes out of Elsa’s long hair. “Let’s go down this one a couple more times, then try an intermediate hill. I think you’ll be ready.”

Another hour goes by. Elsa allows herself to be lost in this feeling her mind has created from skiing, something uniquely her own. _It’s a different experience for everyone._ She wonders how it makes Maren feel. Judging by the look of bliss on her companion’s face, the peaceful upturn of her lips that seems unerasable, and the way she spreads her arms out, perfectly balanced and coasting freely over the snow, Elsa thinks this must put her on cloud nine.

They’re on their third or fourth ride back up the ski lift when Elsa notices a couple in the cable car ahead of them. She gazes softly at them, looking at the way one person has their arm slung over the shoulders of the other, their feet gently swaying and nudging at each other in the open air. Elsa has never been big on relationships, because it’s never been a main priority in her life. She can count on one hand the number of close partners she’s been with. But that outlook has never dampened the way she admires the affections others display (and sure, there’s less pleasant things, like the time she walked in on Kristoff and Anna doing a little more than just “going to bed”— her mistake there). 

Elsa feels eyes on her then, and she turns to meet Maren’s stare with a weightless grin. “Did anyone ever tell you,” Maren murmurs, studying her like a painting in an art museum, “how your eyes look in the sunlight?”

Pleasantly numb, Elsa shakes her head, gaze hopping between each snowflake clinging onto Maren’s braid. “How... how do they look?”

Maren sighs, apparently at a loss. Her brow furrows, and she pauses a moment, then says, “Ask me when I’m feeling more creative. Right now it’s indescribable.”

Elsa chews on her lip, wondering who will be the first to do it. Then Maren slides closer to her on the wooden seat, moving her left arm so it comes to rest on Elsa’s shoulders. In turn, like it’s a setup they’ve recreated countless times before, Elsa scoots in and leans her head on Maren’s chest. If they were anywhere else, on a normal first date (if this can even be called that), they could hold hands. But with bulky gloves blocking their way, this will have to do for now— and Elsa doesn’t mind.

An early dusk starts to gather in the sky, and the lamps high above flick on as they prepare to descend one of the higher slopes. “Last one for the night?” Maren asks, flashing her a smile.

“Sounds good to me!” Elsa turns and squints; the lamps help a little, but their flickering fluorescent lights only reach so far down the path. This should definitely be their last run— in just another five minutes, it’ll be even more consumed by shadows.

Taking a deep breath, she and Maren set off at the same time. Right away her friend is going faster than her, and feeling up for a little challenge, Elsa decides to try catching up with her. _Lean forward to pick up speed,_ Maren told her earlier. She does just that, and relishes in the feel of the wind whipping at her already reddened cheeks. It seems like she’s going a hundred miles a minute, and it’s terrifyingly amazing.

She calls out, and Maren— who’s still just a bit farther ahead— lifts an arm in a wave. Then things start to move too fast. Elsa hears the _crack_ before she sees the tree branch start to fall. Fiery panic swims into her blood, only to be iced over the next instant. She tenses her arm and tries to lean back, but she remembers the second part of those instructions: _— but be careful, because once you’re bent forward, it’s hard to lean back again._

The branch is falling, falling, heavy and too fast, showering snow on its way down, its shadow darkening over the place where it will land directly in Maren’s path. It’s too close for comfort, too close—

Elsa straightens out her tensed arm, wobbling precariously like she’s at the edge of a precipice, and throws it forward, screaming for Maren to swerve away. Everything else is a blur around her except her hand, her fingers, which feel frozen inside her glove. Skin slick with arctic sweat, Elsa yanks off her glove with some force because it feels like the right thing to do. But time is still moving too fast, and she has only a split second to watch the daggers of ice shoot out of her poised fingers. There’s only a second to watch the shield of ice arrange itself perfectly, stretching like a hood over Maren, who lets out a cry and expertly brakes herself right as the huge limb crashes onto the shield, then rolls off unceremoniously.

Elsa only has a second to watch as Maren’s wild face swings towards her. Then she slams into a hard mound of snow.

She wakes to snow bunched up in her goggles, stinging her watery eyes. A sharp ache pulses in her head, like two hammers are taking turns slamming at her temples. Elsa coughs harshly and when she tries to stand up, her stomach rolls with nausea. Before she can even think of finding her footing, she feels hands brush snow off her back, spraying it all about. Then she’s being yanked out of the mess, and all she hears is her name being said over and over again.

“Elsa? Elsa, can you hear me? Elsa.” Maren’s face swims in her vision, highlighted on a backdrop of early evening stars. Blindly Elsa reaches an arm outward and places it on the other’s shoulder, giving it a squeeze. Maren rests a hand on top of Elsa’s, breathing out a steady breath. “Okay. Good. You’re alive. You’re okay.”

“It just... came out of nowhere, and...” Elsa trails off, still somewhat breathless. She’s not sure if she’s talking about the snowdrift she hit or the tree branch that would have dealt much worse damage to Maren, or... or the ice.

Maren helps her to her feet, and they slowly but steadily start to limp their way to the lodge, luckily being close enough to the base of the slope. For now, Maren chooses to focus on the snowdrift, saying, “Those things can feel like a brick wall when you’re going that fast. You’re... you’re lucky you’re not hurt.”

Elsa thinks she’s hit more than one figurative brick wall today, and all of them start and end with the woman who’s currently supporting her as they stumble onward. She swallows hard and says nothing for a long time.

It’s not until they are back in the truck when words are needed again. Maren puts the key in the ignition but doesn’t turn it all the way; instead she twists to Elsa and mutters, “Your address?”

Elsa tells her, then leans hard against the window and stares out of it for the duration of the ride. She feels completely and utterly terrible: her muscles are stretched-out putty and her heart is a heavy stone in her stomach. She’s lucky Maren is even giving her a ride home; Elsa has probably freaked her out and once she’s dropped off, there’s no chance she’ll ever see her again. Tears push against the back of her eyes and Elsa closes them to seal in the incoming rainstorm.

Maren pulls into her driveway, which is starkly empty— a reminder that Elsa’s only transportation is currently in the shop in town, rendering her stuck for the time being. She’s not even sure if there’s Uber around here.

She gives a rushed “thank you” and doesn’t waste time getting out, but then she hears “Elsa, wait.” It comes out in a whisper, almost lost in the breeze, and it pulls Elsa back toward the truck. 

“Do you... do you trust me?” Maren asks. She looks the most serious Elsa has ever seen her, maintaining eye contact with earnestly raised brows.

Wordlessly, Elsa nods.

“Then... is it okay if I... invite myself in?” She pulls off her hat and bunches it up in her hands. “I— I don’t want you to be alone after... after all of that.”

 _I don’t want you to be alone either._ Elsa can’t believe it— Maren nearly died, inches away from being crushed under a tree branch, and it’s _Elsa_ she’s worried about? 

“Yes,” Elsa mutters. “Yeah. It’s okay.”

The two of them walk up to the door and Elsa lets them in. In strained silence, they strip off their boots and coats in the mudroom. It takes another minute, but eventually Maren sheds some of her discomfort and states, “You need a hot bath.”

Elsa blinks at her. “Oh, I’m fine. I’ll warm up enough from being inside—”

Suddenly there are hands on her face, hands with soft palms and calloused thumbs. Maren’s touch is feather-light; she cups Elsa’s cheeks before moving her fingers downward to stroke her jawbone and swirl wonderful massages into the back of her neck.

“You’re tense,” says Maren firmly, “and you’re ice cold. Come on.” She grabs Elsa’s hand and tries to direct her, until she stops and realizes. “Where’s the bathroom?”

Defeated, Elsa points up the stairs with her free hand and they start up. She tries to ignore the feeling of their fingers woven together impeccably, a pattern of cold, pale and warm, tan fingers. But Elsa knows she doesn’t _want_ to ignore this amazing feeling, so she stops trying to.

Then she’s standing in the bathroom doorway, watching Maren start to fill the tub with warm water. Satisfied, Maren steps back and watches water splash against white porcelain. Absently, she starts taking her hair down, digging her thumbs into the braid until it’s undone. She turns back to Elsa with a friendly nod, smoothing out her dark glossy waves as side-swept bangs fall over her eyes.

Elsa clears her throat, hating to disturb the now companionable silence. “If... if you think this will fix it... it won’t,” she says, gesturing to the tub and the hot water. “Believe me... I’ve tried.”

Maren looks calmly at her, completely unruffled. “There’s nothing that needs to be fixed,” she says. “You’re just cold.”

“But—” Elsa stops, letting her eyes follow the curtain of gorgeous hair that tumbles past Maren’s shoulder. She’s wearing flannel as always, and now she’s working on rolling up her shirt sleeves. Elsa tries again. “You’re not... you don’t think I’m... strange? Because I- I don’t know why I’m... like this.” 

“I don’t know why either, but I don’t think it’s strange. I think ‘incredible’ is a better way to describe it.” Maren finishes cuffing and buttoning one sleeve and moves on to the other.

Elsa picks lint off the sleeve of her sweater and tries to understand. “You... don’t think I’m crazy,” she says blankly.

“Nope.” Finally Maren looks up from her shirt and reaches forward to take Elsa’s hands again. “You know,” she continues softly, rubbing circles onto the stressed skin, “a while ago I stopped believing things are crazy and just... _believed_ instead. I’ll believe anything.” She locks their gazes, then lifts their interlocked hands up to their chests. “You see? I’m holding your hands right now, the hand that—” She stops, swallows hard, then tries again. “This hand that... shot out _ice._ You saved me, Snowbird.” She presses their hands to her chest, as if she could tuck their shared warmth inside her ribcage and nestle it alongside her heart.

All Elsa can do is exhale. Any words she had been considering are gulped right back down, lost forever.

“There’s a reason they say ‘Keep Vermont Weird,’” Maren says, a chuckle hiding behind her words. “I really think you belong here.”

At last, blessedly, Elsa stumbles upon something to say. She squeezes their hands and moves closer until the space between them is nonexistent. “I really think you belong with me,” she murmurs, eyes already on Maren’s mouth.

Maren’s tongue darts out, ever so slowly wetting her lower lip, once again mercilessly teasing. “Yeah?” she asks, but the question barely has a chance to survive in the open air; it rolls off her tongue and right onto Elsa’s, depositing a honey-like sweetness. They kiss slowly, taking their time to feel each other out. Elsa finally stops holding back and lets her fingers slip through Maren’s hair, velvety and curly from being tamed into a braid all day. She feels hands at her waist, injecting warmth into the skin just below the waistband of her jeans— and suddenly, she doesn’t think she needs a hot bath anymore. There are other ways to stay warm.


	5. monday, april 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ughhh this chapter took way too long to write and i'm still not completely satisfied with it! but i've done all i can with it and i'm just ready to move forward lol. hope y'all like it, thanks for reading!

you love me even when i fall apart

you always told me i was a piece of art

\- sophie meiers, "sincerely, yours"

* * *

_June 2011_

The yellow sun cuts through the stifling air, bearing down on Anna’s back and sending pinpricks of sweat down her neck. She reaches behind and tugs at parts of her gown that are sticking to her skin. Up on stage, the school’s valedictorian is giving her speech, and Anna can’t help but glower a little bit. Her GPA was just behind Marie Thornton’s by freaking .01. .01! There’s nothing worse than being so close yet _still_ not good enough.

She breathes out another impatient sigh, squinting through the golden rays at Marie’s pinched face. It feels like the sun is a burning iron pressing down on her, an effect that is worsened tenfold by the layers she’s wearing. After a few more minutes, Marie finally finishes up her squeaky-toned speech and graduates’ names start to get called. It takes a long time to reach _W_ in the alphabet, but eventually Anna is standing up and approaching the steps on the side of the stage.

A warm hand settles on her shoulder, depositing an affectionate squeeze before it travels down to join with her shaky fingers. “Nervous?” a voice hums.

Anna giggles and pulls at his arm until he spins around to face her, shuffling backwards as the line inches along. “Not really,” she says, flicking some hair off her shoulder. A few hours ago it had been perfectly straightened, but now it is a frizzy mess due to the heat. “Just ready to get out of the blazing sun. This is literally torture.” 

“So you’re telling me,” he says, a teasing smile touching his lips, “that this heat is _worse_ than listening to Marie blab on for fifteen minutes?”

“Fifteen minutes? Try _thirty.”_

He leans down and brushes his lips against hers. She wants to deepen the kiss, but wordlessly he reminds her of where they are and keeps the embrace at a nose-nuzzling minimum. Then someone steps between them.

“Hans, come on. You’re up next.” Eddie White, the only kid unlucky enough to have a last name between _Westergaard_ and _Winter,_ grabs at Hans’ arm. 

“Alright, alright.” Hans lets go with one last peck on her cheek, then he heads up the stairs.

Eddie gives a resigned sigh and shoots a look at Anna, who is entranced watching her boyfriend prance across the stage like a prince. “Do you two always have to either make out or make eyes at each other?”

In response, Anna only offers a dreamy sigh. When she hears her name a minute later, she goes to receive her diploma feeling like the soles of her kitten heels are made of clouds. She grasps the paper that seals her future and almost makes it all the way across the stage— until she trips at the very edge of it. Some gasps pop up from the nearby crowd as she falls, but then Anna is caught in strong, familiar arms which wrap around her and bring her in close to a chest that’s heaving with surprise.

“Anna! Damn, are you okay?”

She plasters on a strained smile, a breathless laugh wheezing through her lungs. “Couldn’t end high school without one last big finale, right?”

He shakes his head slowly. “You amaze me sometimes.”

“I guess you could say I really... _fell_ for you, huh?” Anna’s pained smile slips into a sly smirk. If they weren’t standing out in the sun at graduation right this moment, that look of loving awe on his face would earn him a hell of a lot more than just a smirk. So instead, she playfully flicks off his mortarboard cap and sticks her tongue out at his protests.

Only a small handful of names are called up after them. Then it’s time for Anna’s parents to bustle up to her as the graduates disperse amongst their admiring family members.

“We’re so proud of you, sweetie,” Jared says, smiling and ruffling her hair.

 _“Daaad,”_ Anna whines, smoothing down the red strands that are now standing straight up. Great, now she looks like she just rolled out of bed with a full face of makeup. Then her eyes land on the empty space beside her parents, the space that should be filled in by a certain someone. Her humble smile slips into a disappointed frown. “Where’s...?” she starts, but her mother, as always, already has Elsa in mind.

Allison sighs and crosses her arms; there’s not even a hint of a proud grin on her face. “Your sister wanted to come, Annie-bear. You know that. But she wasn’t able to get back in time. Hopefully she’ll have arrived by the time we get home.”

She doesn’t offer anything beyond that, and Anna doesn’t press the subject. Instead she squints through the hot air, trying valiantly to find Hans, but the crowd seems to have swallowed him whole. Swallowing back a frustrated groan, Anna follows her parents to the parked car— but not without pausing every few steps to chat with a friend and take a picture.

It doesn’t take long to get home. In the backseat, Anna wriggles her way out of the suffocating white graduation gown. She breathes a sigh of relief as they pull into the driveway, and she spots her sister’s silver Accord parked at the curb in front of the house. However, her feet haven’t even hit the ground before her father says, “Can you grab the mail on the way inside, Anna?”

Seriously? She hasn’t seen her sister in _weeks_ and she has to get the mail first? “Yep,” she grumbles, adjusting her path for a quick jog down to the mailbox at the curb. Anna sifts through the stack of envelopes on her way up to the door, humming absently. (Her solo from _Chicago_ is still stuck in her head 24/7 even three months later.) Then she freezes, eyes huge. The last piece is addressed to her, and from the return address, she knows _exactly_ what this is. A mix of icy dread and burning curiosity accumulates in her gut, feeling like a punch in the stomach. Everything else forgotten, Anna runs inside and tosses the rest of the mail on the kitchen counter— only to realize she’s stumbled right into the heart of her own grad party.

“Oh!” she squeaks. “Um, hi, everyone!”

And in an instant, she is engulfed by the extended Winter clan. There’s a chorus of “Congratulations, Anna!” over and over again; she puts on her pretty and perky mask, the same one she used for years when acting in school musicals, and greets each family member with a smile, hug, and “thank you.”

After at least twenty minutes, Anna emerges from the throng of people filling the entire first floor. She still has yet to see Elsa, but she knows exactly where her sister is. With the envelope tucked under her arm, Anna escapes upstairs and slips into the bathroom at the end of the hall, locking the door behind her for extra security. Then she tears into it, unfolds the letter inside, and scans over it hungrily. Then she reads it again, then one more time. Tears spring to her eyes but don’t fall. _Why can’t you cry for them?_ The voice in her head is scathing, unforgiving. _Because I don’t know who they are._ She answers herself, but it doesn’t make her feel any better. She could pore over all the pictures of them in the world and she still wouldn’t know them. She doesn’t know their voices, their mannerisms, what made them laugh, what made them cry. She has no idea if the reason her hair sticks out at all angles when she wakes up in the morning is because her mother also struggled with it. She’ll never know if the crinkle that appears between her eyes when she laughs is the same crinkle her father would get. She doesn’t _know._

Exhaling a shaky breath, Anna steps out and folds the letter until it’s a small square that fits in her closed palm. She makes one last stop in her room, going right to the jewelry box on her dresser. She removes the top part and takes out a small satin bag that’s nestled in the bottom right corner of the box. Undoing the drawstring, Anna tips the bag into her hand and slides the ring that was hiding within onto her left ring finger.

Afterward, she moves across the hall to her sister’s closed door. “Elsa?” she calls, rapping lightly on the door. “You in there? Or did you escape out the window?”

“Come in!” Elsa replies. Anna enters and finds her sister sitting cross-legged on her childhood bed, hunched over a laptop and typing furiously. Elsa’s icy gaze flicks up briefly before returning to the screen. “Can you close the door behind you?”

Anna complies and shuffles over to sit on the end of the bed, folding her knees under her. The frilly pink and white dress she’s wearing contrasts sharply with Elsa’s gray sweatpants and old T-shirt from her high school days. Anna had thought she would be comfortable after kicking off her fancy shoes at the front door, but taking in her sister’s cozy outfit sparks some weird kind of jealousy in her— and she _loves_ dressing up.

“So,” she says when Elsa offers nothing. “You— you weren’t downstairs.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m sorry.” Elsa purses her lips and squints at the laptop screen. “I got up early, worked a bit, then drove here and well... I still have so much to do.”

“It’s summer,” Anna points out blankly, as if her sister isn’t an incoming college junior.

Elsa snorts. “Summer internships are no joke, Anna.” Then, at last, she shuts the stupid laptop lid and brushes her braid over her shoulder. “Sorry. I promise I’m giving you my full attention now.” She scoots over the blue patterned bedspread and brings Anna into a much-needed hug. It’s the kind of embrace that sinks into Anna’s bones, wrapping her in a soothing essence only her big sister can provide. As usual, Elsa’s skin is lukewarm to the touch, because somehow despite the June heat she’s able to regulate her body temperature. (Either that, or she’s a vampire. When they were little in school, Elsa was always the vampire while Anna, with her red hair and deceased parental status, was dubbed “Little Orphan Annie.” Not her favorite nickname.)

Anna wasn’t holding her breath, but the exhale of relief she sighs into her sister’s shoulder feels very freeing. “I missed you so much,” she mumbles.

Elsa pulls back, rubbing Anna’s arms and kissing her forehead affectionately. “I missed you too. I’m so sorry I missed your birthday and graduation. But I _do_ have your gift with me—”

Anna bounces eagerly, hard enough for the mattress to squeak a bit in protest. “Ooh! Where is it? Where is it?”

“— _but_ I’m making you wait to open it so Mom and Dad can see your reaction, too.” Elsa smirks at her, unfazed by her sister’s palpable dismay. “Come on, you can wait a little. At least until tonight. It’s special.”

 _“Very_ special?”

 _“Very_ special.” 

A grin reforms on Anna’s face. She flops back onto Elsa’s lap and asks, “Braid my hair?”

“Okay.” Anna lifts her hand so Elsa can take the scrunchie wrapped around her wrist. Anna feels nimble fingers start to weave through her hair, gently tugging out any tangles or snags in order to make the optimum braid. Then the hands stop moving, and the room freezes over. This feeling also unfortunately bites into Anna’s bones, replacing the warmth with uneasiness. 

“You’re still planning on...” Elsa trails off. Anna knows what she’s talking about, though. And just like that, she knows the weak grip she had on her sister’s affections is gone.

She rests her left hand on her stomach and toys with the tiny glittering diamond, the antagonist of Elsa’s story, that’s positioned on her ring finger. “I’m marrying him, Els,” she says firmly. “I love him.”

“You’re still a child! Both of you are.”

“I’m eighteen.”

“Yeah, you’ve been eighteen for barely a week,” Elsa snaps. She jerks her hands back, and Anna’s hair falls limply onto the bed. Anna sits up, crawling to the other end of the bed. She searches Elsa’s face for even a sliver of what she had a moment ago, but now her sister is unrecognizable. The blue eyes are cold and closed up, her nose all scrunched the way it gets when she’s upset. Anna knows hers does the same thing. “You’re being stupid,” Elsa continues when she receives no immediate rebuke. “In what universe will getting married right out of high school end well for you? Especially considering it’s—” She stops short, shaking her head rapidly. Flyaway blonde strands slip out of her plait, falling onto her forehead.

Anna glowers. “Say it. Say what you were gonna say.”

“Fine. I will,” growls the stranger facing her. “It’s _Hans,_ Anna. Your high school boyfriend—”

“Boyfriend of almost two years!”

“— your high school boyfriend who, might I add, is not the nicest person to anyone besides you. He’s self-centered and arrogant. He’s the kind of guy who looks into the rearview mirror of his BMW to admire his own eyes rather than check the other drivers.”

Anna twists the ring around her finger until it pinches her skin. “So he doesn’t like you. Whatever. Makes sense, since you’re always off in your own world.”

“Off in my own world?” demands Elsa incredulously.

 _“Yes,_ off in your own world. You’re so distant all the time. You can’t even bother to show up for one of my biggest milestone birthdays, or my graduation. I was there for your graduation two years ago! I’m _always_ there for you, Elsa. But suddenly you’re in school and gone, and you _stay_ gone because you’re too good for me and our ‘fake’ parents,” Anna spits, drawing fury-laced air quotes with trembling fingers. “And you know what? Maybe I want somebody who puts _me_ first for a change. Is that so surprising? Hans thinks I’m beautiful and charming and funny, and— and a million other adjectives I can’t think of right now because I’m too mad!”

Elsa is like a stone statue. She has her legs tucked up against her chest and her forehead pressed into her knees. When she speaks her voice is muffled. “Why do you care so much about what he thinks? You have your own mind, too.”

“Well, Hans is my hu— my boyfriend, Els, I have to give his opinion _some_ merit.”

Elsa’s head jerks up. “What did you say?”

Anna stares evenly at her. Rage is boiling in her blood, filling her with a new confidence unfamiliar to her. Despite this, when the words come off her tongue, they are unstable and quiet. She averts her gaze, choosing instead to pick at a stray thread on the blanket. “We... we got married. At the courthouse. On my birthday.”

“Oh my god...” The statement tapers off into a mournful whimper, and it clamps ice-cold jaws directly around Anna’s heart. She sniffles and refuses to take in Elsa’s expression, forced instead to listen to her sister suck in disbelieving breaths. “Mom and Dad— th- they don’t...?”

“No, of course not,” Anna mutters. “They would murder me.”

“So how long is this supposed to stay a secret?” 

“I don’t know. Long enough until it would be okay in their eyes.”

“And when will _that_ be?” Elsa questions. “You know they’re not his biggest fans, either.”

Anna pulls the thread loose and switches to curling a loop of auburn hair around her index finger. She still smells like the fruity perfume she put on this morning, mingled with his minty cologne from their hookup earlier in his car before the ceremony. “And he’s not theirs,” she retorts simply. 

The room is silent. The polka-dotted scrunchie has been dropped from Elsa’s hands, abandoned in the center of the verbal battlefield between them on the bedspread. “I can’t believe this,” Elsa says, and between the syllables her voice clearly breaks. With every lapse, the soreness in Anna’s chest expands. “4.0 student, on high honor roll, star of every musical, accomplished mathlete and pianist. And you throw your life away a few days into being eighteen.”

Anna says nothing.

“You have your _whole life_ ahead of you, Anna. It can take years to find the right person. Why settle now?”

Anna sits there like a dartboard, taking it all without flinching. Then she slides off the bed, shaking in her bare feet, short summer dress, mascara-laden lashes and messy hair. “Because I love him. You should try loving somebody sometime, it’s a nice feeling.”

At that, Elsa’s eyes hollow out and her face pales considerably. She opens her mouth, but Anna isn’t done yet.

“By the way, I have a present for you, too.” Anna takes the folded-up letter from where she set it on the nightstand and throws it onto the bed next to her sister. It’s made of lightweight paper, but it might as well be a boulder the way Elsa blinks at it in bewilderment. “I sent an inquiry to the police department in Troy, New York. About the investigation of the crash that killed our parents, if they’ve made any progress.”

“No,” Elsa hisses, her voice ominously low.

“Elsa, they made an arrest and I think you should read—”

_“No!”_

Anna chews on the inside of her cheek and shrugs. “Okay. Suit yourself, then.” She turns to go, but then she hears one last thing.

“Wait.”

The package is flung at her so fast, it’s a blur when it lands in Anna’s unsuspecting hands. Anna says nothing when she catches it, instead sucking in a tearful breath as she exits the icy cold room and slams the door behind her.

On one side of the door, there’s a girl slumped on the floor, hoping her mascara won’t run too badly as she clutches a hand-knitted snowman doll in her hands. On the other side, there’s a girl who shakes her braid loose and stands at the open window, watching an unread letter burn to a crisp in her fingers.

* * *

_Present Day_

Elsa is fidgeting like a puppy trapped in a crate. She crosses one leg over the other, then switches them. Her left hand is held steadfast to her thigh, where Maren is massaging soothing circles into it.

“Please, don’t be so nervous,” Maren says. “It’ll be fine.” She has her head propped up in her free hand, elbow leaning on the table. Her eyes are trained on her companion, brows knitted in worry. 

Elsa lifts her glass of water to her lips and takes a tiny sip, praying the liquid doesn’t turn to solid ice at her touch. “There’s no use telling me to _not_ be nervous,” she responds, sighing for the millionth time and craning her neck to glance at the entrance of the cafe.

“I hate to say this, but... I don’t understand _why_ you’re so stressed. Your sister seems like a super sweet person. So does her fiance. I’m excited to meet them.” 

“It’s just... she’s... well, she’s a _lot_ sometimes. I don’t want her to alarm you and give you the wrong first impression. I love Anna to death but she can be a little overwhelming.”

“And Kristoff?”

“Oh, Kristoff is a sweetheart. You don’t have to worry about him,” Elsa assures her. She shifts her gaze from the door to Maren’s face, and her heart performs a giddy backflip. Since Elsa met her, the thing beating in her chest has become a skilled gymnast, doing all kinds of twirls, flips, and free falls. And now, treating her eyes to the gorgeous face in front of her, feeling Maren’s warmth pressing into her chilly skin, absorbing that serene voice... it subdues Elsa’s nerves. Only by a little bit, though.

Of course, it’s as soon as Elsa takes her watchful eyes away from the door when Anna and Kristoff walk into the cramped cafe. Anna notices them immediately; she hops up and down while wearing the goofiest grin on her face. Elsa, meanwhile, waves once and motions them over. 

“Oh my gosh, hi!” Anna cries the moment they’re within earshot. She leans over the table, prompting Elsa to catch her in a very tight hug. When they break apart, she turns to Maren with the same puppy-dog-like friendly face. “And you must be Maren! Hi!” To Elsa’s horror, Anna yanks the brunette into a spine-snapping hug similar to the one Elsa was just freed from. To distract herself from her embarrassment, Elsa shares a fleeting embrace and warm exchange with Kristoff.

“Okay, Anna, let her breathe,” Elsa says, and her plea is luckily answered. Anna moves back and plops down in the chair Kristoff has scooted back for her. Their table is already small as it is, crammed into a corner which Elsa is directly trapped in. Anna is across from Elsa, with Kristoff facing Maren. The waitress for the table next door squeezes behind Anna’s chair, and with a chuckle she moves in closer to give the worker more space.

“Phew. Seems like everything about Vermont is small!” Anna remarks, swatting some stray hairs behind her ear and perusing the menu. “Small state, small amount of people, small cafes.” Her eyes dart to Kristoff for backup. “I mean, I think driving up here there was a span of thirty miles on the freeway where we were alone. Like, not a _single_ car passed us. It was so weird!”

Kristoff tilts his head to the side, humming faintly as he scans the brunch selections. “Yeah, it was pretty nice. Peaceful, y’know.”

“Yeah, peaceful— and surprising, since this one here drives slow like a grandpa!” Anna nudges him with her elbow, and with a snort he sticks his tongue out at her.

There’s a laugh from Maren, who says, “Vermont is definitely small to its core. I’ve lived here my entire life and never known anything different.”

The waitress comes by to take orders, and when she’s gone Anna right away has her gaze fixed on Maren again. “Really? Your entire life?”

Elsa can’t help but let her eyes land on Maren too; she lets them linger there on her friend’s amused expression paired with that everlasting smirk. She’s melding so well with Anna’s explosive chipperness, and it’s only making Elsa fall deeper. Maren hooks her eyes for just a half-second, and her smirk grows before she resumes eye contact with Anna.

“Pretty much,” answers Maren. “My parents originally came from Quebec, then they moved down here a few years before they had me and my brother. Most of my family is still up north. I’m full-blooded Abenaki on both sides.”

Anna perks up. “Quebec, huh? Do you speak any French?”

 _“Oui. Et toi?”_ Maren smiles.

From across the table, Elsa notices her sister’s knowing look, a Look that is clearly aimed in her direction. If Elsa’s heart was in overdrive before, it’s pumping out of her chest now.

“Well, Elsa here took French in high school _and_ college. Didn’t you, Els?” Anna says. Elsa tries to ignore her sister’s continuous back-and-forth glances between her and Maren.

Maren tilts her head towards Elsa. A strip of early afternoon sunlight slices through the window behind her, turning those eyes bronze, and Elsa is almost positive she’s about to lose control— and they haven’t even been served their food yet. “Hmm,” Maren muses, combing slender fingers through her loose hair. _“Intéressant.”_

“Haha, um... yes, I did. I don’t remember it too well, though. I mean, I can— I can like, count from one to ten. And that’s about it.” Elsa grips her water glass. “Is it getting hot in here?”

“No, actually, I’m a little cold to be honest,” Anna replies. It’s the most innocent answer ever, but the unintentional weight behind it is the last straw for Elsa. She stands abruptly, and as a result her chair screeches against the aged wooden floor.

“I gotta go to the bathroom, be right back!” With that, Elsa squeezes out of the corner her seat is tucked into and all but sprints across the cafe to the even more compact single restroom. Upon entering, she slams the door shut, locks it, then crouches down on the floor. Before her knees are bent all the way, there’s already frost creeping up the dull orange walls. The cinnamon-scented air freshener stings her nostrils, way too overpowering and provoking her anxiety-induced nausea. For a moment she stands over the toilet dry heaving, then the next instant there’s a knock and a soft voice.

“Elsa?” She can barely hear her over the crowded murmur just outside the door.

She moves to the sink and leans hard against it, pressing her knuckles into the cool porcelain. “What?” she croaks. The word is like sandpaper in her throat.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, Anna.”

“Seriously.” Her sister’s voice cuts through the door more strongly now, threatening a storm ahead. “I know you’re not telling me the truth. Come on.” When Elsa says nothing, she presses, “Do you want me to break down this door and possibly get kicked out and sued?”

“Oh yes, they’ll definitely sue the lawyer who is very good at her job over a broken door.”

Anna sighs, unamused. “That’s the thing, though, Elsa. I’m a lawyer and I’m very good at my job, and that means I _rarely_ lose an argument. So get your butt out here, please.” There’s a pause, then “Maren is worried about you, you know.”

Elsa nibbles on her lip. Of _course_ Maren is worried about her, and she has every reason to be because she knows something Anna doesn’t.

“Aw, really? I thought that would get you out for sure,” Anna whines.

 _Out._ Elsa gulps and looks at her surroundings, at the tiny cafe bathroom with the old running toilet and the peeling orange wallpaper. She sure can’t stay in here forever, can she? Plus there’s no window to escape out of.

Mind set, Elsa unlocks the door and slips out, molding her face into something that appears much calmer than the way she feels beneath. Anna squeezes her hands and scans over her sister as if Elsa just emerged from a war zone. “Els, what’s going on?”

Elsa crosses her arms over her chest, keeping her hands tucked away. She meets Anna’s imploring gaze and says quietly, “We’re just friends.”

Luckily her sister catches on. “Okay,” Anna says, raising her palms in surrender. “I just thought that maybe—”

“Don’t.” Elsa walks away, leaving the other to trail her back to the table. As they seat themselves, Maren and Kristoff are deep in an animated conversation about dogs— but Elsa doesn’t miss the concerned hazel eyes that flicker in her direction, touching her skin like hot flames.

* * *

“It’s this one up here on the left.” Elsa points through the window at her cottage. Kristoff turns into the driveway and parks behind her car; before the Jeep rolls to a complete stop Anna’s door is already open and her feet are crunching excitedly over the gravel.

 _“Ugh,_ I’m so sick of sitting in the car!” she laments, circling around to pop open the rear cargo door. “That was a _long_ seven hours.”

“But we’ve been overdue to visit you,” Kristoff adds, joining his fiancee to unload their bags. He catches Elsa’s gaze as she hops out of the backseat and closes her door. “Seriously. Sorry it took so long for us to come see you here. You’re only a little farther up north, it’s not like you moved across the globe.” His sentence ends in a pained grunt as he heaves one of Anna’s overstuffed duffel bags onto his shoulder.

“Oh, don’t worry about it!” Elsa’s quick to reassure them. “There’s not a whole lot to see here, anyway.” Even as the words leave her mouth, she knows it’s a lie: there’s green mountains tipped white with snow, there’s curvy roads that twirl through the hills like ribbons, there’s little shops that dot the streets with warm golden light. _And there’s Honeymaren Nattura._

As if she read Elsa’s mind, Anna gasps and spins around in the cool dusk air. “Are you _kidding,_ Els? It’s gorgeous up here! I’m honestly ashamed we haven’t been up sooner.” She jabs her thumb at Kristoff as she picks up another bag. “Besides, Mr. Lumberjack here is now in an even more fitting environment than what he gets in Harrisburg.”

To help, Elsa grabs a cooler from the back of the SUV and waves off Kristoff’s protests. She leads them to the front door— Anna pauses to gush at the name “Arendelle”— and unlocks it. The trio jogs up the short flight of stairs to the main floor, where Elsa heaves the cooler onto the kitchen counter. She directs them to the guest room upstairs, which is the only other bedroom in the pint-sized house.

It takes about fifteen minutes for Anna and Kristoff to get settled in and freshened up; this includes a brief phone call with their pet-sitter back home during which Kristoff holds a detailed one-sided conversation with Sven. “You would adore Vermont, buddy,” he says in that animated way he only reserves for Anna and his dog.

In the kitchen, Elsa pours some glasses of wine— and then after another fifteen minutes, Anna is snoring on the couch, so Kristoff carries her up to bed. Before he tiptoes into their room, he turns back to Elsa and whispers, “I forgot to say this, but Maren was super nice today. She and Anna really connected... and that’s definitely a good thing.”

“Yeah.” Elsa rubs her arm. “She has a way with people. I don’t know how she does it. If meeting Anna for the first time doesn’t faze her, then what will?”

He smiles. “She seems like a really great friend.”

Elsa’s heart throbs. “I’m lucky I met her.”

“It’s not often you stumble on the perfect best friend,” says Kristoff. He pauses, visibly shaking around his next breath as he glances at Anna curled up on the bed. Then his chestnut eyes flick back to Elsa, and one of them closes in the quickest of winks— it’s so fast, in fact, that Elsa thinks maybe it was an involuntary twitch. It’s what she wants to believe, but she knows him better than that. 

She holds back a sigh, unable to dampen the grin tickling her lips. “Good night, Kristoff.”

“Night, Elsa.” The smirk he wears is devilish— oh _yes,_ he knows. He must know. Did Anna get in his head? No, no... he must’ve figured it out himself. Before Elsa can mull it over more, he closes the door and leaves her alone in the dim hallway.

She stands there for another minute, listening hard. Luckily it doesn’t take long for Kristoff’s snores to join Anna’s, mingling in a not-so-harmonious symphony of slumber. At last free from hostess duties for the night, Elsa springs into action. She creeps back to her room, choosing her steps carefully because the old wooden floors would creak under a fly’s weight. Digging through her closet, she chooses a slightly nicer outfit of black leggings and an exercise hoodie that has never once been used for exercise. She strips off her pajamas, throws those on, ties her hair back in a low ponytail, and after stuffing her feet into a pair of sneakers, she’s out the door. 

Anyone who sees her appearance might assume she’s going on a late night gym run, but only she and one other person know better than that. Elsa is planning to work on her cardio exercises, but only so that she can manage the heart palpitations she feels way too often around this one other person.

Just as they planned, Maren’s truck is idling quietly outside. Elsa wastes no time running up and hopping inside. Maren shifts it into drive and guides the pickup down the incline towards the exit to the main road. “I missed you.”

“It’s been three hours,” Elsa laughs.

“That’s three hours too long.” 

The drive to Maren’s place doesn’t take long; after all, it’s just five minutes down the mountain. She and her brother share a petite cottage hidden behind Northuldra Ski Supply, at the end of a narrow path that Elsa never noticed branched out of the parking lot. Earlier Maren made it clear to Elsa that Ryder wouldn’t be home tonight, however; he had been encouraged (or rather, ordered) to spend the night at his boyfriend’s apartment in town. This information had been muttered in Elsa’s ear on their way out of the cafe, and it was paired with a sultry look shot like laser beams through narrowed hazel eyes. That had been enough to convince Elsa. (And the last domino lined up in their plan fell perfectly into place when Anna fell asleep before ten o’clock, ironically put to sleep by a helping of rosé wine while wearing her Rosé All Day pajama shirt from Target.)

Together they kick off their shoes at the door of the cabin. Maren tugs off her hat— today it was a purple beanie, part of a large collection because she loves wearing hats— and fluffs out her hair, which was in a braid earlier but now isn’t.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” she tells Elsa.

Elsa glances around. _Humble_ is definitely a way to describe it, but it isn’t the only word that comes to mind. Facing the front door is a wooden staircase that Elsa hasn’t walked on yet but already knows is creaky. To the left is a simple living room with an armchair, overstuffed sofa, and TV. At the right is a kitchen that seems to have every inch of it filled with stuff. Right next to the door are multiple pairs of high-end skis propped up against the wall. Suddenly gravity realizes the precarious positioning of the gear, but Maren catches them in her arms right as they start to clatter to the floor. “Ugh, he always leaves me to clean up his crap.” 

Elsa suppresses a snort and helps her cram the skis into a nearby closet. Once they’re successfully hidden from view, Maren straightens and gives a frustrated groan that nearly makes Elsa choke on her own saliva.

“You’re lucky you have a sister,” Maren says as she flicks on the light above the staircase. “I love Ry, but he’s a pain in the ass. Living with a man reminds me every day to be grateful I’m not straight.” She starts up the steps but pauses, glancing back at Elsa who’s close behind her. “I’m not usually this much of a complainer, I swear.”

“Don’t worry, I’m sure I still have you beat on your daily complaint count,” Elsa says. “The number of times I bitch about something in my head...” She trails off and chuckles.

Maren does too, and her smirk doesn’t lose its shape for a moment. “Do you usually see everything as a competition?” she teases. They reach the top of the stairs; at the landing there’s a room to the left, a room to the right, and a small bathroom in between. Maren takes her to the room on the left.

“Growing up with Anna will do that to you,” Elsa admits.

Once they’re seated a polite distance apart on Maren’s bed, Elsa’s nerves remember to exist. She wipes her clammy hands on her leggings, then seconds later they’re sweaty again. To distract herself, she takes in her surroundings: the walls are a pale lilac color accented by a painting of a frosty wooded clearing hanging above the headboard. A faux bearskin rug covers most of the marked-up oak floor, and below the only window is a storage chest that doubles as a loveseat which is currently shrouded by long, wispy white curtains. Elsa imagines the sunlight that seeps in here during the day must be brilliant.

Maren folds herself, hugging her knees to her chest. She’s wearing jeans and a striped camisole top under a pale brown cardigan, one corner of which she’s absently rubbing between a thumb and index finger. Elsa openly admires her, unsure whether or not Maren is consciously ignoring her unabashed staring.

Elsa wipes her hands on her thighs again and says, “Your room is really pretty. You must get a lot of natural daylight in here.”

 _“Merci,”_ Maren replies, short and sweet. She knows very well what she’s doing, though, and suddenly Elsa sees through her thinly-veiled act of nonchalance.

“You... really like speaking French, hm?”

Maren tilts her head toward Elsa, and a glossy brunette waterfall slips past her shoulder. _“Peut être.”_

Elsa is clueless about what that could mean; it sounds vaguely familiar, though. She hasn’t tried this hard to think about what she learned in high school literally ever. The mystery of it is enticing, though, enough to make Elsa not want to know what the words mean. From the way Maren is gazing at her, it must mean _something_ good, anyway.

And so she says, “Do you... do you speak French all the time in your bed, or just with me?”

Maren inches closer. _“Seulement pour toi, mon trésor.”_ It rolls off her tongue smooth; in the short distance between them, Elsa can already taste her. Sweet and crisp like a fine wine.

The cardigan is drooping off one shoulder, revealing flawless olive skin. Maren takes her time sliding it off, and because her hands are functioning a few steps ahead of her brain, Elsa reaches forward to help her peel it off the other arm and toss it to the floor. 

Elsa’s lips are already tingling in anticipation of what’s to come. She swallows hard and wonders why somebody this clever, kind, and gorgeous would look twice at her. She’s found herself thinking about fate a lot lately, and it’s true that she didn’t _have_ to make that turn onto the little road at the snow-dusted sign reading _“Northuldra Ski Supply.”_ She didn’t have to do that.

But she did.

Maren’s fingers are grazing her skin now, lightly like she’s handling a porcelain figurine. Her eyes ask a question, and Elsa nods an affirmative. Hands slip under her hoodie, and Elsa raises her arms to aid its removal. She’s wearing one of her lacier bras underneath, the kind that is saved to be admired in the open air. It was the only purchase she could be persuaded to make when Anna dragged her to a sale at Victoria’s Secret a while ago, and now Elsa couldn’t be more appreciative she has it. It makes her companion’s movements more fluid, a restrained feverishness that melts Elsa’s core to a molten state... and makes her extra glad she has the matching panties on as well.

Then, finally, Maren starts to lean in and Elsa meets her halfway. Her tongue is like velvet in her mouth, working at an expert pace that draws moans out of Elsa, deep-throated and high-pitched, noises she didn’t even know she was capable of producing. She falls back on the bed, allowing Maren to top her. The cami is so tight it sticks to Maren like a second skin, and blindly Elsa’s fingers scrape at the hem of it until it’s off and gone, disintegrated for all Elsa cares. While Maren works on sliding off the leggings, she leaves a trail of kisses down the side of her throat. Elsa presses her back into the mattress, whining like a needy child because she’ll never be able to get enough of this.

Then her eyes pop open, and she startles enough for Maren to hesitate. Wordlessly Elsa stares up at the ceiling, and with a brow furrow of confusion Maren rolls off of her so she has the same view.

The ceiling above them is lined with a thick layer of frost. It unfurls in a beautiful pattern like delicate white lace and plunges the room into a miniature winter.

_Winter._

A dry sob rakes up Elsa’s throat, stinging like a spear’s point tracing tender flesh. This fear hurts. Elsa’s always been scared of herself a little bit, scared of the ways she can let others down without realizing it. And now because of her, Maren will have to take an ice scraper to her bedroom ceiling.

“I- I’m sorry,” she stammers, sitting up and blindly searching for her discarded clothes. “I don’t... I don’t know what...” _What’s wrong with me,_ she meant to say. She knows there’s something wrong, something very wrong. But the words crumble to a bitter dust on her tongue.

Tears stream hot down her cheeks, and then Maren is enveloped around her, all warm arms and bare torso. _“Shh, shh._ It’s okay.” Maren presses her lips onto Elsa’s neck, her cheek, over the tears. “Elsa, please. It’s okay.”

“No... no, it’s not,” Elsa chokes. “A- a- and it’s only getting worse.”

Hazel eyes are level with her own, blinking slowly to communicate sweet amity. “You don’t have to fear what you don’t know,” Maren tells her. 

Elsa lets her hold her close, accepts another flurry of chaste kisses, and shudders until her body is too sore to cry anymore. She knows Maren must be freezing without a top on, but she stays rooted to the spot and doesn’t stray for a single second.

As much as Elsa wants to remain fused to these arms for forever, she knows she can’t. Since Anna fell asleep early, she’ll be up at nine— hell, maybe even eight— to start making the blueberry pancakes she promised in a sleep-dazed murmur as Kristoff carried her to bed. If Elsa is MIA, it’ll spell a chaotic morning involving the entire SWAT team being summoned to little Warren, Vermont. The thought of Anna going on a desperate rampage in search of a sister who is actually very safe and well cared for is amusing enough to cheer Elsa up a bit.

She pulls back from Maren and smiles weakly. “I should... I should get back.”

Maren nods, pursing her lips. “Okay.” She retrieves her cardigan from the floor and wraps it around herself. Elsa shoves her clothes back on in the dim light; she’s pretty sure her leggings are on inside out, but she couldn’t care less right now.

The five-minute drive back up the mountain is silent, but the silence is comforted by the presence of Maren’s hand in Elsa’s, attached over the truck’s center console, their own unique woven pattern. Elsa stares at the lights on the dashboard, only ever allowing herself to sneak two glances at her companion; the entire time, the darkness through the windshield remains unpierced by another pair of headlights.

When they pull up at the end of Elsa’s driveway, she’s relieved to see all the lights are still off in the house, everything apparently undisturbed by her temporary absence. Finally Elsa looks fully at Maren for the first time in several minutes. She finds the same serene face, features which are marked by calm wonder rather than fear or alarm. Elsa doesn’t _want_ Maren to be scared of her, but she can’t understand why she isn’t.

“You can be scared of me,” she says. “You can tell me to go away and you’ll never have to see me again.”

Maren holds their joined hands up to her face and presses her lips to Elsa’s frozen knuckles. “Is that what you want?” she asks, mouth moving against pale fingers.

Elsa’s chest heaves. _“God,_ no. Of course not.”

“Then I wouldn’t dream of it,” Maren whispers. _“Mon trésor,”_ she adds with a placid smile.

Elsa leans in hesitantly this time, but Maren accepts her almost instantly, kissing with the same blissful tranquility displayed on her face. Elsa reaches forward to glide her hand, her cursed hand, through lustrous brown waves.

Then Maren breaks away and murmurs, “So how much longer am I going to just be your ‘friend’?”

Elsa has wondered that too. The thrill of this secrecy is intoxicating, but maybe it really isn’t that much of a secret. If the energy between her and Maren is that tangible, why try to conceal it?

So she tips her head back and gazes at her through slitted eyes. “Will you come to my sister’s wedding with me?”

Maren laughs. “So that’s the way you’re gonna answer, hm?” At Elsa’s nod, she pecks her nose and says, “I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

For the first time, Elsa thinks maybe this is the part of her life when she’s meant to soar along at the top. 

_It can take years to find the right person._

As she walks up to her door, she twists back around for one last look at the girl in the mud-splattered pickup truck.

_You should try loving somebody sometime, it’s a nice feeling._

Elsa matches the smile Maren gives her, and it lasts all the way through the front door, the mudroom, and up the stairs to the kitchen.

That’s where she finds Anna sipping a glass of water, which her sister sets down to accommodate crossed arms and a very specific Look.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> french translations:  
> "Oui. Et toi?" = "Yes. And you?"  
> "Intéressant." = "Interesting."  
> "Merci" = "Thank you"  
> "Peut être." = "Maybe."  
> "Seulement pour toi, mon trésor." = "Only for you, my treasure."
> 
> **i am by no means a french speaker, so if any of these don't flow right/are inaccurate please let me know! (especially if these don't work with canadian french!)


	6. friday, july 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a shorter and mellower chapter compared to the others. i wanted to get this updated before i leave on vacation for a week, so here it is! and thanks so much for the love and feedback on the last chapter. it is always appreciated :)
> 
> also, happy new year and new decade and all that!

i never get

bored of lookin' at you

'cause every time

i see somethin' new

\- girl in red, "watch you sleep."

* * *

Today is the first morning Elsa wakes up next to her.

Sunlight pours in like honey through the curtains, drenching them and the bed in a golden shine. Elsa opens her eyes. She yawns and stretches her bare arms over her head. Then she looks to her right and takes in the sight of Maren sleeping soundly beside her— and she can’t help but relish in how _right_ this feels. Everything about this is as idyllic as a morning after scene in a romance movie: the sunshine lightly dappling Maren’s calm face; the slope of Maren’s nose, which Elsa traces upwards with her pinky finger; the unapologetic nakedness of their bodies, skin brushing skin. 

Elsa rubs her thumb over the tiny birthmark on her girlfriend’s shoulder. It’s her favorite thing to just lay there and wordlessly compliment every little feature of her lover; but if her body is a work of art, then the heart and mind beneath it are an entire gallery to explore. Elsa wants to find a way to articulate this, but she knows that once those eyes open and meet hers, the words will dry up in her throat. Maren deserves to receive what she gives out, though. 

Moving slowly to not disturb Maren’s slumber, Elsa peels back the blanket and bends down to fetch yesterday’s clothes from the floor and put them back on. She doesn’t deeply care if she heads downstairs looking like a walking rag, but she does take a moment to step in front of the mirror and tame her bedhead into a braid that’s already fraying by the time she reaches the bottom step.

In the kitchen, Ryder has an entire pancake factory going. He’s standing at the stove, prodding at a pancake that’s almost done on one side; to his left is a massive bowl of batter, and to his right is the rest of the assembly line: three plates, two of which are balancing precarious stacks of pancakes, and a choice of three different grades of maple syrup.

“Wow!” Elsa exclaims, admittedly taken aback by his setup. She had expected to come down to a quiet kitchen and only planned to start the coffee machine. “It smells amazing in here.”

Ryder glances at her over his shoulder and beams. “Thanks! Pancakes are literally the _only_ thing I know how to cook.” He turns back to keep an eye on the sizzling one on the stove, resting the hand holding the spatula on his hip.

Elsa clears her throat, which is still mucky from sleep, and goes to wake up the coffeemaker. “I gotta say, I’m impressed you were up before either of us.” She motions to his button down and jeans, which have replaced the t-shirt and plaid pajama pants she last saw him wearing the night before. _“And_ dressed.”

“Well, full disclosure, but the only reason I’m up at this ungodly hour is because I have to open the shop this morning,” he says with a chuckle. “Otherwise you can bet my ass would still be in bed until noon.” He flips the pancake over, and it lands with a satisfying splat on the hot surface. “Speaking of which, Mare better get down here soon if she wants her pancakes warm.”

“Yeah, I’ll call her in a minute,” Elsa replies. “She looked so peaceful up there, I didn’t wanna bother her just yet.”

“Go ahead and help yourself,” mutters Ryder with a nod toward one of the filled plates. Then he adds, “Also, you do realize my sister does that ‘Look How Cute I Am When I’m Sleeping’ thing to prevent you from waking her up?”

Elsa measures coffee into three mugs, adding a dash of sugar to hers and cream to the other two. “Seriously?” she laughs. “Well, she’s got me fooled.” She moves over to the pancake station, scanning over her maple syrup options; only Vermonters would have this many kinds stored in the pantry.

Ryder layers the first few pancakes on the one empty plate and winks at her. “It’s a classic Nattura family trick. You’ll learn in due time.”

Elsa waits until the table is set with an array of pancakes, sliced fruit, and coffee. Then she turns to go back upstairs and retrieve the missing member of their trio— only for Maren to round the corner from the staircase and greet them with a sleepy nod. She leans over to press a kiss onto Elsa’s temple.

“Were you two ever planning to call me down?” she teases, pulling back a chair and plopping down in front of the only untouched pancake tower. Her tank top is old, and the straps are loose and drooping from her shoulders, collaborating with the casualness spoken by the hair gathered into a floppy bun on top of her head.

“I was just going to!” Elsa jumps to defend herself. She matches Maren’s smirk and crosses her arms as she sits down.

Ryder snatches one of the syrup bottles and smothers his pancakes in maple goodness. “Okay, let’s be real, Mare. How long have you actually been awake?”

Maren shoots him an innocent look and mumbles around the lip of her coffee mug, “I was sleeping the entire time.”

Leaning over the table, Ryder stares her down with a gleam of challenge in his slitted blue eyes.

“Okay, I’ve been up an hour,” Maren concedes. “Now shut up.”

“I didn’t say anything.”

“No, you did before—”

Elsa can’t help but interrupt here; the sibling bickering makes her miss Anna with a pang. Maren and Ryder have a similar dynamic to the sisters, with a decreased sense of drama and an increased habit of squabbling that Elsa assumes comes from being twins. On multiple occasions she’s witnessed Maren pull the “When I was your age” card despite only being three minutes older than her brother. Just about the only thing they don’t seem to argue over is potential romantic partners. In Ryder’s words, “being gay is the one thing we can agree on.”

So Elsa swallows her big bite of pancake and blurts out, “Hey, at least these pancakes are, uh, really good!” She nudges Maren’s arm. “Right, Honey?”

She knows using the often-dropped first half of Maren’s name does something to her girlfriend— and sure enough, Maren’s defiant stance deflates slightly and she sits back in her chair. She keeps her gaze coolly focused on her plate as she stabs her fork into a pineapple chunk. “Yep. But they _are_ Ryder’s pancakes, so...”

“So what?” he demands, but it goes unanswered. Maren seems to savor her brother’s frustration more than the food, but another gentle glare from Elsa dissolves that. 

They eat in silence for a few minutes, as Ryder keeps an eye on the time and hurries to slurp down the rest of his coffee. Eventually Maren perks up more once the bottom of her cup is visible. She finishes off the last of her pancakes and slips Elsa’s free hand into hers. “You look beautiful today, _mon trésor,”_ she says, ignoring Ryder’s barely audible sigh from the other side of the table.

Elsa only got a brief look at herself in the mirror earlier, but she knows that sentiment can’t be true. A blush burns bright red in her cheeks, and she coughs out a meek “Thanks... you too.”

Ryder’s brow lifts into an impossibly high arch and he throws a shit-eating grin at his sister. “Good to know we don’t use the same French terms of endearment.”

 _“Arrête ça,”_ Maren mutters darkly.

“Okay,” Ryder says, raising his palms in surrender. _“Je niaisais.”_

Elsa glances worriedly between the two, but it takes half a second to read their body language, which indicates the matter has been put to rest and no interruption is needed. 

She watches Ryder quietly finish his food and stand to take his plate and mug to the sink. Elsa has had a soft spot for him from the very beginning. After all, he’ll always be the first person to know about Elsa and Maren’s relationship. He’d had a slightly better reaction to it than Anna, who had been more focused on feeling hurt that Elsa hadn’t told her right away. (It was a late-night kitchen conversation that began with confrontation but ended in hugs. Elsa had planned to come out to her sister at some point, but over the years the right moment for it never came up. So there she was, twenty-nine years old and stammering out, _“Anna, I— I like girls.”_ A blank stare had prompted the useless addition _“Like... I’m into girls. A lot. I like girls.”_ Then a pause, then _“But right now, I only like one girl. And that girl is Maren.”_ Finally Anna had put Elsa out of her misery and rushed forward to pull her into a tight embrace with the words _“Oh my god, Els... I’m sorry, I feel like saying ‘I know’ would undermine the moment.”_ The laugh that followed brought Elsa a sense of relief she hadn’t felt in years.)

In Ryder’s case, he unintentionally stumbled into a makeout session that was happening while a suddenly-forgotten movie played on the TV. He leaned over the couch, saw them swapping spit, and said, _“So this is the girl you’ve been bringing over all the time.”_

Elsa and Maren had sprung apart at that, startled beyond belief. Maren’s knee-jerk response was to viciously snap his name and lunge to swat him away.

Unfazed, Ryder had smiled and stuck his hand out at Elsa for her to shake. _“Huh. Funny, she looks a lot like your friend Elsa.”_

_“Go away!”_ Maren pleaded, and finally he obeyed (though not without squeezing in an exaggerated wink, performed as if in slow motion).

Since then, Ryder has rarely resisted any chance to get a playful dig on them. He’s even targeted the poetry Maren frequently speaks to Elsa—

 _“Y’know, you got me interested in astrology,”_ Maren mumbled drowsily one afternoon when they were both lying on her bed, slipping in and out of naps. _“Your freckles,”_ she continued, turning on her side so they were facing each other, _“are the best constellation I’ve ever seen.”_

Ryder happened to be leaving his room to head downstairs; he poked his head through the ajar door and taunted, _“My sister— ever the romantic, but she won’t admit it.”_

 _“I’m an accidental romantic, Ry,”_ Maren protested.

_“Oh really?”_

_“Yes,”_ she declared. (Elsa laid there and admired the side profile of Maren’s face, outlined bronze in the mellow, late-day sunlight seeping through the curtains.) _“An accidental romantic with purposeful meaning.”_

Ryder smirked and turned to disappear down the stairs, calling over his shoulder, _“Okay, well, Guinness World Records called. Something about finding a new contender for Cheesiest Pickup Line Of All Time.”_

Elsa sighs; Maren tosses more affectionate compliments at her than she’s able to juggle. But it really is the best thing, all those honeyed murmurs and sugared whispers. Words have never had a taste before, but Maren’s are oh so sweet: light and lovely cotton candy to stuff Elsa’s ears, hot cocoa to fill and warm her from the inside out.

She’s taken out of her loving reflection by a shouted swear from Ryder. She shakes her head, startled, and looks over to see him watching in dismay as his coffee cup topples off his plate where he had been trying to load them into the dishwasher.

“Damn it—” Maren starts, but then time freezes for a moment. Without thinking it over, Elsa stands and thrusts her arm forward. Ice shoots from her outstretched fingers, curling seamlessly into a slide which catches the falling mug. Stunned silent, all three of them watch as the dropped object slides safely to the ground, coming to a stop at the base of something that had not been there a second ago. Absently, Maren finishes the last of what she was going to say if events had panned out naturally: “— you... broke another one?”

 _No, he didn’t,_ Elsa thinks. _Because of me._ Swiftly she retracts her hands, folding them in her lap as she falls heavily back into her seat. _Because I can’t let things play out the way they’re meant to._

Ryder is speechless as he bends down and picks up the mug with a shaking hand. He eyes the well-intentioned ice uneasily, and if he notices the frost creeping up the walls of the room, he doesn’t show it. His eyes flash from the mug to Elsa, then to his sister. Elsa spares Maren half a glance, but Maren is staring straight ahead at nothing in particular, chewing her lip. Ryder stands and sets the mug on the counter. “I—” he tries, but nothing follows it. Then, after another few heartbeats, he manages a strained “Thank you” before bolting out of the room. A slam soon after indicates he’s left the house, though not entirely because the fear and alarm on his face has stuck to Elsa like chewed gum in her hair.

Maren’s reaction is sorely delayed; she gets up and runs to the door, swinging it open and lamely yelling after him. Of course he doesn’t come back, so with a sigh that anchors Elsa to the spot, Maren shuts the door and shuffles back into the kitchen. She goes over to where Elsa’s creation sits, completely unmelted in the summer heat. She skims her fingers over the ice, following its graceful swoop down to the floor. She touches it the way she touches Elsa’s skin, hair, body. She touches it like it’s the most normally outstanding thing in the world.

Without lifting her face from it, she asks, “How?”

Elsa wills the frost crawling up the walls to stop, but it doesn’t. She wants to lock her hands into steel gloves and throw away the key. “I don’t...” She takes a breath. “I just— I just thought it would be nice if... if there was something there to catch it so it wouldn’t break, and... and I...”

“And it didn’t break.” Maren comes over and stands behind Elsa’s chair, wrapping her arms around her. It takes a second for Elsa to thaw out of her stupor and give in to the emptiness her hands feel without Maren’s in them. They sit there for the longest time, an exchange of adoration pulsing through joined hands— hands that Elsa can’t believe Maren is willing to hold— and at long last, the frost recedes and the room is warm again.

* * *

Elsa wants to set things right (or as right as they possibly can be) with Ryder by the end of the day, preferably as soon as he’s free from the shop. It’s important not only because she likes him a lot, but also because he was one of Anna’s many impulse wedding invitees. (He and Kristoff hit it off when Ryder tagged along with everyone on a trip to Burlington a few months ago. With Maren’s clearly marked place as Elsa’s date, it “felt right” to rope Ryder in as well.) But before she has much time to think over what to say, Maren’s pulling her out the front door and into her truck for an excursion into town.

“Let’s bake something,” Maren says as they turn off of Sugarbush Mountain and head left into downtown Warren. She drums her fingers on the wheel, and Elsa doesn’t miss the feverish undertone to it, the desperate grasp for things to be fine and normal.

But Elsa feeds into it anyway, because she likes normal. “Like what?”

“Cookies. Let’s— let’s make cookies, yeah.” Hazel eyes flick from the road to Elsa, then back. “What kind do you like?”

Elsa mulls over it for a moment, as the truck’s hefty tires rapidly gnaw away at the road between them and the store. Only one variety comes to mind. “Chocolate peppermint,” she replies. “I know the recipe.” She wants to taste these cookies when they’re made with better hands.

“Alright. Chocolate peppermint it is.”

When they drive past Shaw’s, Elsa’s usual (and really only) go-to supermarket, Maren senses her confusion. “Trust me,” she assures her. “I know a local place that’s been around far longer and has way better things.” A few minutes later they pull up at a well-worn storefront at the end of an aged strip mall. Judging from the weather-beaten sign, this place does look like it’s been there for decades, and it’s a refreshing contrast to the shiny newness of chain grocery stores. And it only takes Elsa thirty seconds of being inside to understand why it’s so much better.

They return home before the sun is all the way up in the sky, and slip into an unestablished routine with effortless ease. The kitchen in the little cabin feels so comfortable, like walking around in a pair of broken-in old sneakers. Words are few and far between, but little gestures and touches abound. Maren puts her Spotify on shuffle and drops her phone into a bowl to amplify the sound through the house. Elsa starts the afternoon spotless but emerges with a flour-dusted apron, dough smeared (purposely) on her cheek, and a collection of Maren’s delicate fingerprints all over her clothes, cemented in place with cocoa powder. Every time hands grip Elsa’s hips as Maren slides behind her in the confined space, each instance fleeting lips brush aside hair and graze the side of her neck, it pushes Elsa farther away from the events of the morning. She’s never wanted anything more in the world than exactly this.

After an hour of lazy, slow-paced preparation and another forty minutes of baking, the cookies emerge and only have an instant to cool before they’re plunged into glasses of milk and popped into mouths. Borne from an old family recipe along with a few suggested edits from Maren, they’re the best version Elsa has ever tasted. She wonders how Anna would feel about these.

It’s a breezy day, so the air conditioning has been turned off in favor of fresh air filtering through propped-open windows. The woods outside, at one point icy and brittle, are now lush and green and teeming with life. Elsa stands at the sink washing dishes, handing them to Maren to dry while observing a squirrel hunting for nuts outside. Seeing the little animal makes her miss having pets around. She plans to bring her cats up to live with her soon, though; recently she found the courage to ask Mattias, her landlord, about the no-pets policy in regards to his dogs. He’d blinked at her in mild shock, then grinned broadly and answered, _“Suppose I forgot to scratch out the old landlord’s rule about no pets. Of course you can have them! Don’t worry about it. And please, Ms. Winter, call me Destin.”_ (At that, she’d thanked him profusely and insisted he call her Elsa, but he wouldn’t hear anything of it for “such a respectful young woman who deserves a formal title.”)

Once the dishes are done, the sun has dipped lower in the sky. Elsa plays with the end of her ponytail and stares at the door worriedly. “His shift will be over soon, right?” _If he hasn’t run for the hills already._

“Yeah,” Maren says. “And I don’t imagine it was too busy today. Never is, anyway.”

Elsa catches her dark expression; a few months ago, she might’ve been afraid of overstepping a boundary, but a riptide swept both of them off their feet and brought them to drown in a delightful ocean. There’s no turning back now.

“You’re resentful of something,” Elsa says, rubbing her girlfriend’s arm. “What is it?”

Maren shakes her head slowly, hesitant to answer. Nevertheless, she gives Elsa a little something. “The shop’s been a bit of a sore spot for me. When—” She stops, working her jaw, then resumes at a more rickety pace. “When Aunt Yelena, uh, took us in, she... well, she promised us the world, basically.” She chuckles glumly, flicking a few cookie crumbs across the table. “Which is a silly promise, I know. But she said we deserved anything she could give us. Well, she gave us a dusty old shop to run. I was managing the place on my own by the time I was thirteen. And then... then it was time for college.” She swallows hard. “Pre-vet at UVM. I lasted one semester before I had to drop out because we couldn’t afford it.”

The frown on Elsa’s face is like an ache. She scoots closer to Maren and sighs. “I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be. I mean, it pretty much means the both of us are stuck here indefinitely, but I do love it here.” Maren nods firmly, accepting the one-armed hug Elsa offers. “I’m a strong believer that there’s a bright side to everything. Any other outlook just becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Ryder comes home some time later, looking like a different person than the bright-eyed guy he was this morning. He wanders into the kitchen, opens the fridge and stares into it dully. Then, with a conflicted sigh, he shuts it and turns to where Maren and Elsa are sitting with bated breath at the table.

Silently, Elsa pushes forward a plate of cookies as a peace offering. 

A tentative smile perches on his face. He comes over and sits down across from them, biting into a cookie hungrily. “Wow. These are super good.”

“Better than your pancakes, I dare say,” Maren comments.

“Definitely better than my pancakes.”

Elsa and Maren exchange a glance before they both return their attention to Ryder, who’s now on his third cookie. He gulps and wipes crumbs from his chin, tilting his head thoughtfully at Elsa. “Y’know,” he says, “I haven’t ever been that freaked out, but... I didn’t mean to misjudge you, Elsa. I’m sorry. My sister’s been the happiest I’ve seen her in a long time, and it’s because of you. And with that in mind, you deserve the best from me.” He pulls the plate closer and takes yet another cookie. “And _I_ deserve another cookie.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> French translations:  
> “Arrête ça” = "Stop that"  
> “Je niaisais.” = "I was joking."
> 
> **again, please correct me if these are wrong!


	7. saturday, august 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PHEW i am so so sorry this took forever. i was losing steam for a while there, but i'm hoping to pick up the pace again with updating this story. i'm back at school now for one thing, which means i'm a liiiittle less distracted than i was at home, so here's to hoping for more frequent updates! i love working on this fic but i'm also very excited to reach the end! 
> 
> anyway... as always, thanks so much for all your lovely feedback and thank you for reading <3

if you ask me where i'm from

i say, "you," 'cause you feel like home

\- bea miller & jessie reyez, "feels like home"

* * *

When she was in college, Elsa had difficulty deciding which career path to pursue. At first she’d looked at a political science major, but her brief stint as class president in high school had been stressful enough, and she realized leadership and the corruption behind some of it wasn’t for her. Then she’d pondered architecture, because for as long as she could remember, she loved “building” things: towering skyscrapers, sleek and modern hotels, eye-catching mansions. But halfway through sophomore year, it hit her: throughout her childhood, she often found herself staring past her Legos at Anna’s dolls and all their little dresses and outfits. When she started making money off her fashion design blog recently, Elsa thought the hardest part was over; now she could work from home doing what she loved, sharing her designs with fans, sometimes constructing the pieces with real fabrics and sending them to all corners of the country.

But that was before Anna asked her to _please_ design her wedding dress.

 _“You know me better than anyone else,”_ she told Elsa. _“And I know whatever you make will fit me in every way.”_

Well, no pressure there.

Maren isn’t big on dresses, Elsa was quick to find out. When they went to get Maren something to wear for the wedding, though, she made a beeline for the gowns. She came in and out of the dressing room, trying on dress after dress, standing stiffly and presenting herself to a very indecisive Elsa, who was well aware her girlfriend could wear a potato sack and still look stunning. Maren tried on a million pieces in all lengths, fits, and colors until she found one she was the most comfortable in— the most important thing, Elsa insisted.

As they stood in the checkout line, Maren held the dress up by its hanger and skimmed her fingers over the thin, sheer fabric; the wedding is going to be outside, after all, and it’ll be hot as hell.

 _“Are you sure you don’t want something else?”_ Elsa asked, concerned at the uncertain wrinkle between Maren’s brows.

She shook her head, draping the garment over her arms as the line shuffled forward. _“Hush, hush. I can wear a suit to the next wedding.”_

 _Next_ wedding? Elsa scoffed. _“And when will that be? Ryder planning to propose to Ethan soon?”_

 _“Well...”_ Maren paused then, front teeth poking at her lower lip. Her eyes flicked to Elsa for half a second before retreating. _“We can be the ones to know when the next wedding is.”_ The wink that followed was enough to knock Elsa into next week.

About a week before the big day, Elsa, Ryder, and Maren piled into the latter’s truck and drove down to Harrisburg. Elsa offered to take a few turns driving during the seven-hour trip, but immediately regretted it because it felt like sitting behind the reins of an immense, untamable horse. It took some twenty minutes of hard brakes, seat adjustments, and a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel, but eventually she got the hang of it.

Once they crossed the border out of New York, Ryder peered out the window of the backseat curiously. _“Huh. Never been this far south before,”_ he remarked, spreading his palm against the cool glass like he was a child staring into an aquarium.

Elsa nearly jumped out of her skin, because last she turned and checked on him a few minutes ago, he had still been sprawled over the backseat fast asleep. Maren voiced the same surprise: _“Jesus, weren’t you just sleeping five seconds ago?”_

He chuckled. _“Not my fault your backseat feels like a mattress made of rocks.”_

_“Oh, right, my apologies. I forgot to purchase the Deluxe Backseat Comfort package.”_

_“A shame.”_

_“I know, right?”_ As Maren talked, Elsa giggled and twirled her fingers through the chocolate wisps escaping from Maren’s ponytail. _“It would’ve included memory foam seats, a plush comforter, and a roll of duct tape to shut up irritating brothers.”_

At that, Ryder sighed and slumped back in his seat. _“Touché.”_

Elsa rolled her eyes. For once, she was relatively unbothered by the bickering, because now she would get to see Anna very soon. Instead of a pang, this time a spark of excitement roared through her blood. Still, she tucked the stray strands behind Maren’s ear and said in her best impression of a mediator, _“Aw, c’mon, Honey. Don’t be so hard on him. That’s the most he’s spoken in the last three hours.”_ She stared out the window a moment, then added, _“So you guys seriously haven’t been this far south before?”_

 _“Yep. Pretty much seen the same sky our entire lives,”_ Maren said. _“Travelling this far from home is like... it’s like we’re breaking through this restrictive wall of mist.”_

From the backseat, there was a loud muffled grunt, meant to be a statement which Elsa couldn’t begin to translate.

Maren hummed, glancing in the rearview mirror before nodding. _“Permission to speak granted.”_

 _“I’m just saying,”_ Ryder began as if he hadn’t just fake duct-taped himself, _“it’s a miracle Aunt Yel let us leave for this long. I think she pities us.”_

 _“If that’s the case, then I’m happy to be pitied,”_ Maren replied. The way she said it was so soft and light, like the wisps of her hair, like grains of sand that could be blown away in an instant. Elsa had the feeling Maren wanted it to be that way.

The week flies by fast. It’s a lot of things packed into a lightning-quick subway ride, disorienting and dizzying because of all the preparations which Anna presented to her the day they got there. Her list rivaled the length of one of her Target receipts, so when Elsa was able to help her cross the final item off it was an immense relief.

The night before, Kristoff went to stay at a buddy’s house and took Ryder and Sven with him. Elsa still has to get up early to feed the cats, though, and she manages to slip out of bed with minimal disturbance to Maren’s gentle slumbering breaths. 

Downstairs, Elsa shuffles into the kitchen and grabs the cat food from the cupboard, curling her bare toes against the hardwood with a light sigh. A quick glance outside presents her with a gorgeous summer day, the kind that’s perfectly capable of hosting a wedding. She peels open the container, splits the serving into halves, and scrapes them onto separate plates. The instant she sets them on the floor, she hears Olaf’s little bell jingling at a rapid rate, and two seconds later his entire face is shoved into the food. She kneels down and smooths her hand over his back, massaging his spine and tracing her fingertips along his fluffy tail. But after a few minutes, she lets a frown overtake her thoughtful expression, and she stands. “Bruni?” she calls, yawning and sweeping hair over her shoulder. _“Bruuuni?_ Bru-Bru?”

As elusive as the tabby is, he has never hesitated to come for food. If anything, Bruni is even more food-driven than Olaf is, and he’s quick to become an angry little fireball if his adopted brother gets too close to his plate. But not even her voice is luring him, so what will? Now thoroughly concerned, Elsa searches the entire first floor and comes out fruitless. Shaking her head, she goes to try finding him upstairs. She checks on each room one by one: the bathroom, Kristoff and Anna’s room (where her sister is slowly starting to stir), and the little spare room that’s currently an office. Nothing. Then that means... 

Elsa turns to the last room at the end of the hall— the guest room. He must be in there. It’s the only possible place left he could be, unless he somehow made it onto the roof. She pushes the door open, and what she sees makes her jaw drop in disbelief. 

Maren is still asleep on the bed, the thin covers only partially covering her body. Nestled into her side also sleeping is none other than Bruni. Bruni, the cat who turns his nose up at Anna’s affection, the cat who hisses at Kristoff’s gentle hands, the cat who rarely has patience for Elsa herself, the cat who hates everyone and everything, is curled up beside Maren and _purring_ that broken radiator purr of his.

Elsa’s heart is so swollen she feels it pressing against her ribs. Grinning stupidly, she sits down on the edge of the bed and rubs her hand over Bruni’s stripes, which ripple like melted fudge over his back. “Well, well. You missed breakfast, baby,” she murmurs, meeting his round blue eyes. He grumbles and buries his muzzle again into Maren’s arm, which she subconsciously moves to accommodate him. “You think she’s a keeper, huh?” Elsa asks. She pauses, taking in the wonderfully domestic scene before her; it’s the kind she wishes she could capture into a bottle forever. “Yeah, I think so too.”

A few rooms away, she hears the bed creak, the shuffle of sheets, and a loud yawn. Elsa knows that’s her cue to rouse Maren, and she does just that. Though she’s reluctant to dissolve this rare bit of peace (and incite the wrath of both sleeping souls before her), she knows everyone will need an early start today if anything is going to get done.

Elsa leans down and starts to prod at Maren’s shoulder; then, against her better judgment, she attacks her girlfriend’s face with a flurry of little kisses. As expected, Maren wakes with a jolt and blindly swats away whatever’s touching her at this ungodly hour of the morning. Bruni flattens his ears and jumps off the bed.

“Hey, hey, it’s just me,” Elsa whispers, pressing down Maren’s flailing arm. Suddenly she’s having flashbacks of trying to wake up Anna for school when they were younger. “Honey, come on. It’s time to get up.”

 _“Ugh,”_ Maren sighs, flipping onto her back as her eyes pop open. “What if I told you... I’ve already been awake for an hour?”

The smirk that crawls onto her face afterward dampens Elsa’s annoyance in an instant. “Of course,” Elsa says, lying down next to her. “I’m not surprised.” Maren is way too convincing at impersonating sleep, which means— oh god. Which means she _definitely_ heard Elsa’s little conversation with Bruni a minute ago. A red-hot blush fills her face, and to hide it Elsa covers her cheek with one hand.

“I’d say I’m sorry, but your sister has no right keeping a bed this comfy and not even _using_ it all the time.” Maren groans and rolls over again onto her stomach, burrowing into Elsa’s side. “Let’s steal this mattress when we leave. We can load it into the truck bed.”

“Oh yes, it’s _very_ easy to sneak out of here with an entire mattress. They won’t even notice!” Elsa teases. “And I hate to break it to you, but I don’t think it’s the mattress that you’re finding super comfy. It’s the blankets.” She reaches forward and tugs the thin summer covers forward. 

“Really?”

“Really. Our mother, she...” Elsa pauses, smoothing her hand over the snowflake pattern in the blanket. “I mean, our _mother—_ not the one you’ll meet today, but—” Again a roadblock is thrown up in her throat, and the words screech to a halt. She hadn’t realized Anna kept this blanket after all these years— why wouldn’t she, after all? It’s one of the few precious family heirlooms they were given after the accident. All Elsa has is an old compass of her father’s and her mother’s amulet, which has sat unworn in the bottom of her jewelry box for years. And Anna got— blankets. Just blankets. Elsa’s heart twists.

Maren rubs her back while she works through her thoughts. “It’s okay,” she says softly, and the way she says it really makes it all feel okay. Elsa wishes she had that kind of magic entwined in her voice.

“She made this. And so many others. Everyone got a bedspread for their room,” Elsa explains. Her words are like a physical manifestation of crackling ice. The room feels cooler already, and she knows it’s not the air conditioning. “Bedspread for spring and summer, bedspread for fall and winter. She would sit for hours and make them, weave in any requested patterns. For a while Anna was obsessed with the Trix rabbit, so Mama stitched a little white rabbit into one of her blankets.” And the other one, she remembers, Anna’s winter blanket, was covered in snowmen.

“Was this one yours?” Maren asks. Her hand lands on top of Elsa’s.

Elsa nods stiffly, mentally kicking herself for the tears that push behind her eyes. She acts as if they died yesterday, not over twenty years ago. “Yeah. Yeah, it was mine. She said she always saw snowflakes in my eyes.” She pulls the blanket up more so it puddles over their folded knees. “A- and I always loved her shawl. So one day I woke up and found this blanket over me in bed, with her shawl sewn in on one side.” With that, Elsa turns it over and shows Maren the purple patterned cloth, stitched in all snug on the underside of the quilt. 

There’s a little cough, and with a slight startle, the pair glance up to see Anna leaning against the doorframe, a lopsided grin stretched over her face. “Hey, you two sleepyheads,” she says.

“Good morning,” Maren replies. She gives a sheepish giggle. “We, uh, we meant to get up, but—”

“— we got sidetracked,” Elsa finishes. She shoots her girlfriend a look which is quickly understood. She’d rather plug in a lame excuse than give Anna the truth and distract from anything uplifting on her wedding day. Let Anna think what she will.

Anna’s gaze briefly flashes to the old blanket clasped in Elsa’s hands, and her lips part, something sympathetic probably poised to pounce out, but then she appears to shake it off and replace it with a wider smile. Elsa wonders how much her sister overheard. Damn, she _really_ needs to become better aware of when others are listening in.

“So,” says Anna, coming over and perching on the edge of the bed. She flounces down with a sigh that’s only the first indication of an incoming storm of nerves. “Today’s the day.”

“You’re getting married,” Elsa says. The words are candy in her mouth, a special kind of candy that is coveted, a kind that can only be bought from a tiny shop, a kind that’s rarely found— the kind that she only finds on Maren’s tongue, or in the sweetest moments, a taste so cloyingly sweet it’s _almost_ too good to be true. But unlike the last time her little sister had a wedding ring on her finger, this is true as true can be, and Kristoff isn’t too good— he’s _perfect._

Anna gives a little bounce in response. Too restless to sit for long, she jumps back up and pulls Elsa up with her. “I’m getting _married!”_ she squeals, eyes bright as she drags Maren out of bed too.

“Hell yeah you are,” Maren cheers. Once she’s on her feet, Anna yanks them both into a hug that leaves them all breathless afterward. Maren’s hand finds Elsa’s instinctively, and the moment is almost too much to bear, but in a good way. _The best kind of happiness is found when you get to share it with others._

“Okay. Okay,” Anna breathes. She tries to smooth down her sleep-tousled hair, but the effort is futile. “Let’s do this thing.”

* * *

The salaries of a young attorney and a construction manager, even when combined, don’t exactly reach high numbers. Though both the families of the bride and groom offered to pay for fancier arrangements, Anna and Kristoff refused. _“What better place to make it official than the place where we plan to live out our lives together? It’ll only make this house more special to us.”_ And though the Winters fought it tooth and nail, it was firmly decided that the wedding and reception would take place in the backyard of their dream cabin in the woods. _“I mean, it was kinda always our plan all along,”_ Anna told her sister at one point. _“I remember when we first stepped into the house, then saw the backyard, I was like, ‘This is a place I’d wanna get married in. This is it, right here, this is all we’d need to be happy.’”_ They drop the most money on catering, not because anyone’s cooking sucks but because of the sheer number of people attending. Anna worked on the decor and bouquets herself, assembling them from flowers grown in their own backyard garden. The music is courtesy of Kristoff’s bandmates, a small group called “The Icemen” whom he performs small gigs with every now and then.

The day drags on at a pace far too fast for Elsa. For Anna it must not be fast enough, because she’s too jittery to sit still in her chair while Elsa and Allison work on her hair. “Come on, dear,” Allison huffs when Anna shifts her position yet again. “Right now you’re harder to tame than your hair, and that’s saying something.” 

“Sorry!” Anna chirps. Then she squeaks and moves again, to everyone’s chagrin. “Sorry, sorry. God, Els, your hands are cold.” 

Elsa stares down at her hands, embedded in stubbornly frizzy red locks, and for a second she’s braiding her five-year-old sister’s hair again, waiting for their parents to pick them up from daycare when they should’ve been there two hours ago. Her own apology slips past her lips, too numb to be felt but just audible enough to be heard.

In fact, Elsa lets herself slip into a functional stupor, sliding a hazy rose-colored filter over her surroundings. As the house and yard fill up with more extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, people who had been there for birthdays and graduation parties, Elsa imagines them with a different last name and different features. She wonders how they would mingle with Kristoff’s equally enormous adopted family.

Later she slips their mother’s amulet around Anna’s neck right before she’s due to walk down the aisle. She does it without warning, coming up from behind and wrapping the necklace around her sister’s bare neck.

“Oh! Elsa, what’s—”

“I thought you needed a little something extra,” Elsa says. She pulls the clasp until it’s snug to the nape of Anna’s neck, and brushes away a few already escaped auburn strands while she’s at it. 

As she circles around to straighten it against Anna’s chest, her sister gasps and lifts the amulet to examine it properly. “It goes so well with the dress, Els... I—” Tears spring to her eyes, the kind that prohibit a steady stream of words. “How— how did you—”

“I may or may not have planned this all along,” Elsa admits. She takes the weighty stone from Anna’s hand and moves it until it’s lined up beautifully with the gown’s neckline. “Just, y’know, as a last-minute surprise.”

“You’ve already done so much,” Anna chokes out, lower lip trembling. “This is beyond what I ever could’ve hoped for. _Thank you.”_

Elsa knows she took a gamble with her design, and it was a nerve-wracking gamble to make because in this case her design was a wedding dress. A wedding dress for her sister, no less. Not to mention Anna’s usual preferred color scheme is warm colors, oranges and pinks. But when Elsa whipped out her final sketches several weeks ago and showed them to her sister, told her what colors she planned to stitch between the clear sequins and white fabric, Anna was overjoyed about it. The crying that almost immediately resulted gave Elsa all the confidence she needed. Anna had put her full trust in her to make something amazing, and that something happened to be based on their mother’s amulet. It sat for years collecting dust in Elsa’s possession, but it deserved somewhere brighter to reside. So she’d had it put on a new silk string, polished to its original shine, and all the while came to terms with parting with it. It took a few times crying into Maren’s arms and refusing to tell her why she was crying, but Elsa found peace. It’s not like she is selling it to someone random (and she could never dream of putting a price on it); it’s going to someone who deserves it just as much as she does, if not more.

Elsa walks down the aisle just ahead of her sister and takes her place at the side of the altar. Everything is green, from the grass at their feet to the handmade arch that stands behind Kristoff and the officiant. Vines and other plants are interwoven in it, many ending in a delicate spray of tiny flowers which dangle off the edge and form a thin curtain. When Elsa got here earlier this week, Kristoff came to her wondering if she could add a little extra pop to his tux, something to add on to the subtle color scheme in Anna’s dress. And now, she’s grateful he asked; the floral detailing she’d stitched into his jacket really picks up the shades of turquoise in his boutonnière. It’s one of the few smaller details Anna has no idea about, so she’s excited to see her reaction.

Elsa also made sure to know where Maren and Ryder would be seated ahead of time so she could easily pinpoint their location during the ceremony. She cashes in her first stolen glance now, peering at her girlfriend through the first couple rows of murmuring family members. Maren looks positively incredible, not that she ever doesn’t. It took Elsa way too long to appreciate the reasoning behind Maren’s unusual full name; the woman sitting a few yards away from her is gleaming golden and all Elsa’s sputtering brain can think is _honey. She’s honey._ The sheer dress shows off her gorgeous deep tan, and her glossy hair is arranged into an elegant knot that Elsa dreams of unraveling later. And her eyes, remarkable even from a distance, capture the sunlight and as a result have become, quite literally, pools of honey. Maren finally shrugs off Ryder’s excited whispers and catches Elsa’s eye to give her a wink. Elsa isn’t quite sure how she got this insanely lucky. 

Her idyllic little daydream is shattered by a grunt from Kristoff which has an alarmed undertone to it. She snaps back to full awareness and meets his gaze. _“What?”_ she mouths. Anna will be coming down the aisle any second now— it really isn’t the time for _them_ of all people to be goofing off at the altar (and, yes, shame on her for zoning out. Not her fault her girlfriend’s super hot, though).

They don’t keep eye contact for long, because his round eyes quickly flick down to Elsa’s hands, which are gripping her bouquet a bit tighter than she meant to. Confused, she follows his gaze and is flooded by a level of horror that matches her naturally perplexed brother-in-law’s.

It’s a sweltering August day, they’re standing outside baking in the sun, and Elsa’s bouquet is almost entirely coated in a frosty layer of ice. _No. No. This can’t be happening._ In all the chaos of this past week, this particular dilemma had slipped her mind. Now all the stress must’ve gotten to her.

 _“Elsa,”_ Kristoff whispers urgently. His hair was neatly gelled back, but one lock is now falling on his forehead. “What is going on?”

She clears her throat, which draws more attention than she wanted. Slowly she works her hands up the bunch of flowers, picking away at the ice while her mind prepares a viable excuse. Just when it’s on the tip of her tongue, however, the music swells and Anna emerges from the back porch doors. Elsa forgets everything else, reverting her hands back to their original place and hoping he was the only one who saw. 

Her little sister is a goddess. With the help of about a thousand bobby pins, Anna’s hair has been flattened into a fitting, simple updo with French braids that snake behind her head. Her arm is loosely linked with Jared’s; for a moment Elsa blinks and conjures up an image of their birth father escorting her instead. She knows how inaccurate her picture is, because if he were alive he would look so much older now. Elsa blinks again, and the floppy blond hair and mustache she envisioned over Jared’s face are gone.

Tears stream down Kristoff’s cheeks. It’s evident he’s already forgotten about what just happened, and Elsa couldn’t be any more grateful. It’s easy for her to forget, too, as she watches her sister step up to face the man bawling like a baby over the sight of her. Kristoff sniffles, which gets Anna’s waterworks going too. Before they join hands, she reaches up to ruffle his hair a bit, freeing it from the gel. “Hey,” she says softly.

“Hey,” he chuckles. “Fancy seeing you here.”

The officiant starts their speech, which was cut fairly short in order to provide more time for the vows. Setting aside ample time was something Kristoff insisted on, but the reasoning behind it is something he firmly kept behind lock and key in his own head. But when his turn comes, after Anna finishes pouring her heart out partly to him and partly into half a box of tissues (which Elsa continuously supplies her with), Elsa finally understands why he’ll need so much time. Kristoff had hidden behind the makeshift archway his lute, which now trembles in his hands, his jittery nerves transferring into it and making the instrument seem alive.

“I wrote a little song for you, Red,” Kristoff says, lifting the lute higher and flexing his fingers over the strings. “From around the time we got engaged.”

Already overwhelmed, Anna can only manage to stammer out an “Oh my god” before he takes a deep breath and begins playing.

_I... I wanna get this right, baby_

_I wanna thrill you in the way you deserve_

_I wanna blow your mind, darling_

_I’m just having trouble getting up the nerve_

_I wanna give you what you want_

_I wanna be the man you choose_

_I wanna sweep you off your feet—_

_Without puking on your shoes._

A chuckle ripples over the crowd, and with cheeks redder than two tomatoes, Kristoff keeps going.

_... maybe I’ll do better in the candlelight_

_I gotta get this right!_

_I wanna make you swoon, baby_

_I wanna rock you with my righteous romance_

_I wanna set a mood, darling_

_But I’m sweating through the seat of these pants_

_I’ve never been in love before_

_I don’t know what I’m doing_

_I’ve never been too worldly in the ways of woman-wooing_

_I’m freezing up, I’m blowing it_

_Not what I meant to do_

_I know how crazy lucky I am to love you_

_Gorgeous, funny, brave, and brilliant_

_Beautiful, won’t give up on anyone_

_You, oh!_

_I wanna get this right, baby_

_I wanna love you in the best way I can_

_I wanna make you cry_

_In a good way!_

_By proving I could be your perfect man_

His fingers are a blur over the strings as he reaches the final set of lyrics. Elsa’s eyes meet Maren’s again through the crowd, and her heart stumbles over its next beat.

_I meant to write it in the sky, I mean_

_I planned to really try to be the opposite of me_

_But Anna, I will love you with all my might_

_I promise you_

_I’ve got that part right_

_Baby, I’m gonna thrill you in the way you deserve_

_We’re gonna get this right, darling_

_As long as we’re together, we won’t lose our nerve_

_I’m gonna be the man you want,_

_I wanna make your life so good._

_We got the hard part over with_

_Now hold me tight—_

The music fades to a perfect hum as Kristoff stops playing, leaving only the band’s gentle tune to provide the backdrop for his final line. He lets the lute fall against his chest and slips his hands back into Anna’s. _“We’re gonna get this right,”_ he sings, reducing the last couple words to nothing but a throaty whisper. He’s so innately focused on his soon-to-be-wife, there could be bombs going off around them and he wouldn’t notice. Kristoff pauses as the band pushes out the final notes, then concludes, “My love isn’t fragile. It could withstand the worst of the worst, and you already know my heart is entirely yours. I...” His voice cracks. “I love you, Anna.” He almost looks like he wants to add more, but then they would be here all night.

Anna is full-on ugly crying now, and that seems to distract him from layering any more adoration onto an already teetering pile. Elsa practically tosses tissues at the bride like they’re flower petals. She’s oh so grateful Anna put waterproof mascara on her list. She’d been right to assume she would need industrial strength eye makeup for today.

After a minute, Anna seems to be calming down, but then Kristoff whistles and Sven comes trotting down the grassy aisle with a velvet pouch held delicately in his jaws.

“Thanks, buddy,” Kristoff says, leaning down and scratching the dog’s ears before accepting the pouch. Sven wags his tail, then promptly lays down at Kristoff’s and Anna’s feet with a giant yawn and a now disheveled bowtie hanging off his collar.

 _Wow, what a best man,_ Elsa thinks to herself with a snicker that blends in with the laughs of the others.

After they exchange rings and kiss each other into a fresh batch of tears, the newly married couple have to jump over a lazy yet enthusiastic mutt— and though Anna almost trips, Kristoff catches her. They stumble down the aisle through a sea of flashing cameras and deafening cheers, and Elsa thinks they’ll manage just fine.

* * *

“So what exactly _is_ your official title?” Ryder asks at the reception, which is tucked under a huge tent a few feet away from where the ceremony was. In the summer heat, most of the men have already ditched their outer jackets and loosened their restrictive ties, and he’s no exception. In fact, he brought a bandana along, and it’s now wrapped around his head to keep sweat and limp, shaggy hair out of his eyes. Elsa has to hand it to him, though, because his bandana does perfectly match the color of his discarded tie.

Maren sets her mouth in an unimpressed line and waits for the punchline.

He leans forward and smirks, swirling champagne in his glass. “Maid of honor? Flower girl? Or...” He prods his sister’s arm, but she manages to keep a straight face. _“Tissue_ girl?”

“Ry,” Maren sighs, shaking her head in feigned sympathy. She places a hand on his shoulder. “Seriously, is it painful for you to be this stupid?” She pushes him, and he scoffs at her, unfazed.

Elsa rolls her eyes. “It’s a fair question. I mean, who needs a flower girl when you have this stellar tissue girl on hand?” She pulls the last of her tissue supply out of her pocket (yes, this dress has _pockets,_ it’s why she sprang to buy it) and waves it at them eagerly.

Ryder lifts his glass. “To the best tissue girl I ever did know.” Elsa clinks her glass with his, and after a moment Maren reluctantly joins. 

They all drink, then Maren says, “You see this straight face I’m keeping? This is as close to anything ‘straight’ as I’m ever gonna get.” This only reinforces their laughing.

“Stop!” Elsa begs through a wheeze. “Stop, stop making me laugh so much. I- I have to go do my speech.” There’s currently a lull in the buzz of conversations occurring under the tent, so she figures now is as good a time as any. (Besides, she knows Anna must be counting down the seconds until she and her hubby board their flight to Orlando— Disney World has been her dream honeymoon destination since forever.) She shoves her nearly empty glass at Maren and smooths down her hair, which is fraying out of its signature braid. “Wish me luck,” she says.

Maren smirks and kisses her cheek. “Luck.” She tilts her head and considers. “The good kind, I mean. That’s what— that’s what I’m wishing you.”

“Okay, Yoda,” Ryder quips, which earns him a slap on the arm.

“Oh yes, she’s definitely Yoda. _Baby_ Yoda, because she’s so cute,” Elsa adds.

Maren’s jaw drops in mock offense. She crosses her arms and snaps, “I am _not_ ‘cute’ and you know it!”

With her amusement vindicated, Elsa heads toward the petite stage set up at one end of the tent. She doesn’t miss the last thing Ryder calls after her: “Wow, a speech without any notecards? Show-off!”

The stage houses the band’s minimal equipment and a single lonely microphone on a stand. Elsa gets behind it and taps on the mic. The sound that results should only be high-pitched enough for Sven to hear, but several people wince anyway. Elsa clears her throat and sputters out a few sorries into the microphone. She hates how her voice sounds amplified through the tent; it’s similar to the way her conscience booms in her head when she makes a fool of herself, which is several times an hour. 

“I just...” She takes a breath to refuel, then goes on. “I wanted to say a little something that I hope is worthy. It’s hard to follow after that impressive song, but...” Encouraged by the audience’s giggles (and the shine she spots in her sister’s eyes from afar), Elsa continues, “I... I believe one of the best kinds of love stories is the kind where when someone asks how you two met, you can say ‘It’s kind of a funny story.’ Kristoff and my little sister will always have this coveted privilege. It’s a funny story I’m sure you all know very well by now, and we all know how it ended because Sven is still here with us today.” Right on cue, Sven yips, and Elsa wonders if that dog can seriously understand English. 

“In any case, um... Anna, love, I am so, so overjoyed for you. You’ve found someone who is tripping head over heels for you, so... y’know... now you’ll no longer have to trip over your own feet all alone.” The crowd rolls with laughter, and she thinks she hears a whistle from Ryder. _Phew. Another joke landed._ “But— to make it serious for a sec— I know, I know, I’m sorry. I just want to mention how proud Mom and Dad, our birth parents, would be of you, Anna. They would’ve adored you, Kristoff. And, um... I think often about how time just... _froze_ when they died. The world stopped turning, the ocean stopped making waves, highways came to a dead halt, everything just... stopped. Including us. Our parents will only ever know us as little girls still unmarked by the world. They’ll only ever have these outdated snapshots of us, like dusty little Polaroid printouts. But— but, you know, the world _does_ keep going. And though everything did stop for a second there, things restarted again, and everything in our lives, onward from the end of theirs, has led up to now. So— so even though things stopped for them, I know they’re watching us now, watching you both, and loving the hell out of the woman you’ve grown into and the man you chose to spend the rest of your life with... and, _yes,_ and his dog, too.” Elsa hadn’t realized she was crying, but now she feels the tears streaming hot and sticky down her cheeks, carving paths through the heavy makeup. “Congrats, you guys. Thank you.” With that, she steps off the stage to thunderous applause.

As always, being the center of attention makes her skin prickle, but Elsa grins and bears it through several chats with family and friends. She hugs and consoles a still sniffling Anna, who must’ve used up a lifetime’s supply of tears by now. Then at long last, she ends up facing the parents she’s known for the majority of her life.

“Well said, dear,” Jared says.

“It was a wonderful speech,” adds Allison. Well, then. They’re always quick to sum up what they think, which Elsa can appreciate at times. But then her mother says one more thing while staring past Elsa’s shoulder— “Oh, I think your friend wants you, Elsa. She seems nice, you should introduce us.” The look Elsa gives her must be stricken, because Allison hastily says, “It’s only polite.”

Elsa turns to see who she was talking about even though she already knows. Maren waves and gives her a comforting smirk that beckons Elsa with promises of better moments to come. She would probably come over now, but she’s currently pinned down by a conversation she’s supposedly partaking in with her brother and a cousin of Kristoff’s. _Right. My “friend.”_

“Maybe another time, Mom,” Elsa mutters. Absently she pats her mother’s shoulder, then slips past her to renew her happiness.

* * *

Maren flops back onto the guest bed several hours later, a yawn splitting her jaws into a vast cavern. “One last night,” she moans, shimmying deeper into the covers. “One last night in this _amazing_ bed.”

Elsa sits down next to her. “I know,” she sighs in agreement. She gets to work undoing Maren’s hairstyle, which is more intricate than it looks. She knows she’s probably a few steps ahead of herself, but she doesn’t care. To further boost the mood, she fluffs out her girlfriend’s now loose hair and leans down until their chests touch. “So let’s make it count,” she breathes into Maren’s parted lips.

“Say no more, _mon trésor.”_ Maren pulls her into an oxygen-snatching kiss which she cuts short to apply more little kisses along Elsa’s throat, collarbone, chest, torso.

Elsa does her best to reciprocate, but she’s too submerged in a feeling of ecstasy to do much. She closes her eyes and imagines herself treading the honey waters in Maren’s gaze— and then it kind of just... slips out. “God,” she cries, biting on her hand to muffle her inadvertent sounds. “I love you. I love you s- so much.”

A second later she realizes what she said, and she waits for the panic to set in. But it never arrives. Elsa thinks this is maybe how Maren feels about her power— calm. Calm. _It’s okay._

When she opens her eyes, Maren is close on top of her like a warm blanket. She gazes down at her, chewing her lip. “I love you, too.”

They stare at each other in silence for a long minute. Then Elsa twitches, and giggles nervously. “I’m... I’m glad we’re on the same page.”

“Elsa Winter, you have _all_ of my love,” Maren asserts. Then she scoots back and runs her fingers along the hem of Elsa’s gown. “Now I don’t know about you, but I’m suffocating in this dress. Let’s get ‘em off.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the lyrics kristoff sang do not belong to me... yes, folks, kristoff sang part of "get this right," which was tragically deleted from the final draft of the movie. if y'all haven't heard this masterpiece yet, please look it up. jonathan groff and kristen bell are amazing, nuff said.


	8. tuesday, october 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so... i may or may not have written three entire fics for another fandom in between last chapter and this one... oops? 
> 
> anyway this chapter isn't the happiest, but it's setting things up for winding the story down to the conclusion. so... here goes nothing? thanks for sticking with me through my sporadic updates, and as always i appreciate the kudos, comments, and love :)
> 
> also just want to add, the lyrics for this chapter are from one of my most favorite songs, you really should give it a listen!!

you wake up in the night and refuse to be afraid of the now ...

i break my heart around it

\- tegan and sara, "burn your life down"

* * *

Through the frosted-over window of Oaken’s, the locally-owned grocery store, Elsa sees a winter wonderland straight out of a poem. She honestly finds it hard to believe it still isn’t ski season yet.

“Elsa, dear,” Kai’s rumbling voice distracts her from her reverie. “Would you like paper or plastic?”

“Oh, you know me,” Elsa chuckles, turning to the cashier who has grown to become her favorite over the past few months. “Paper, please.”

With a nod of approval, he packs her items into two tall paper bags, then with a final exchange of remarks about the weather and how the Nattura twins are doing, Kai sends her on her way.

The parking lot could be compared to a skating rink, but Elsa is well-accustomed to this by now. Strapping on her imaginary ice skates, she shuffles over slippery patches with ease and makes it to her car with only one small fumble. Now, if only her car could handle the cold just as well as she does...

The old sedan’s engine is grunting like a reluctant reindeer, but if Maren and two different mechanics (one local and one up in Burlington) both insist that the car is as hardy as it’ll ever be in this climate, then Elsa just has to trust their opinion. Besides, she’s prepared as best as she can for this weather after learning her lesson last year: winter tires installed, oil freshly changed, antifreeze topped off, not to mention all the other stuff Maren fiddled with under the hood last week. She  _ should  _ be good to go.

Once she’s gone down the gravel path that snakes around Northuldra Ski Supply, Elsa parks and hops out, the slushy gravel biting into the soles of her boots. It takes her half a second to realize Maren is indeed outside as well and not in the shop— a quick sweep of the mostly empty parking lot reveals a pair of familiar-looking legs, clad in jeans and bent at the knees, sticking out from underneath Yelena’s ancient Subaru, which her niece has not-so-affectionately nicknamed “the Conestoga wagon” because “it’s just  _ that  _ friggin’ old.”

“Hey!” Elsa calls out as she wanders over. (Once, and only once, she made the mistake of not saying anything before coming over and knocking on the car’s hood in greeting, effectively startling Maren and leaving her with a nasty bruise on her forehead for a week. Elsa made up for  _ that  _ by baking roughly ten tons of chocolate peppermint cookies.)

“Just a sec!” Elsa stands and waits while Maren tugs at something on the well-rusted underside of the wagon; this is accompanied by a grunt of effort that sends a shiver down Elsa’s spine. Then, after a minute, Maren rolls out from beneath the car and tosses a wrench aside as she gets to her feet. “Hey Snowbird,” she hums, depositing a neat kiss on Elsa’s waiting lips. “How was Oaken’s?”

Elsa wonders what it takes for someone to be so effortlessly beautiful. She knows Maren’s not even  _ trying,  _ because she’s admitted as much, yet here she is with auto grit smeared on her face and hair back in a wispy braid and  _ god,  _ Elsa could marry her on the spot,  _ would  _ marry her on the spot.

“It was good,” Elsa says. “Kai wanted to know how you and Ryder are doing. Said he misses you guys a lot.”

Maren snorts out a laugh. “I just saw him last week! And I know for a fact Ryder is there at least twice a week because they’re the only place that carries those weird vegan jerky things he likes.”

“Well, you two  _ do  _ seem to provide fifty percent of their business, so I don’t blame him for being concerned.”

Maren shrugs her shoulders in agreement, then follows Elsa to her car to see what groceries she bought.

“You’re sure you’re up for hiking today? If the wagon needs to be fixed right away—”

“Nah, it’ll be fine. Aunt Yel knows repair on that thing can be a long process.” Maren starts to swipe hair out of her face, but she thinks better and wipes her grubby hands on her thighs first;  _ then  _ she sweeps her braid over her shoulder.

Elsa nods and pops the trunk to showcase her selections: mostly granola bars, packs of trail mix, and the like. “I got the nut butter filled Clif bars you like,” she says, glowing at Maren’s smirk of approval. “And I know we have plastic bottles we can fill with water, and— yeah. I think we should be good to go.”

“Alright! Let’s go,” Maren says, giving an Anna-like hop of excitement. She takes the things and starts to transfer them to her truck.

“Now?”

“Yeah, yeah, Ryder has the shop under control.” Within ten seconds, Maren has everything loaded and she’s climbing into the driver’s seat. However, she freezes when she notices Elsa has stayed rooted to the spot. “What’s up?” she demands, impatiently flicking the key back and forth in the ignition. Her enthusiasm is buzzing around her, practically visible with its intensity. Meanwhile, Elsa’s veins are short-circuiting wires.

“I’ve just— well,” Elsa sighs, rubbing her arm, annoyed that she’s actually nervous about this. “You know I’m not the most outdoorsy person, and I’ve never hiked at this time of year before... I don’t want you to get pissed if I wanna turn back early.”

Finally Maren seems to put her energy at a full stop rather than a pause; she tilts her head and snaps her gum, brow furrowed. “Why do you think I’d be mad? And I doubt you’ll want to leave early— we’ll be bundled up fine, not that the cold ever bothers you, anyway. And we won’t be so far off the grid that nobody would ever find us if we succumb to the ‘frigid temperature.’” Maren jerks her thumb at the food in the backseat. “And no chance of starving to death.”

Elsa rolls her eyes at her flippant attitude. “Okay, okay.” She circles around to hop in shotgun, and as soon as she’s buckled in their hands are threaded together over the console.

“Besides, if worst comes to worst, you can always, I don’t know, build us an ice canoe so we can slide all the way back down the mountain to safety,” Maren jokes, luring a coy laugh out of the other.

Elsa knew that once she moved to Vermont, she would be spending a lot more time outside than ever before. It’s not that she  _ despises _ it— she and Anna spent many summers of their childhood in their own little world in the backyard, and she’s gone on many an interesting hike with Anna, Kristoff, and Sven over the years— but nothing really beats hanging out inside with her computer, a sweet beverage, and a cat on her lap. Still, though, she knows hiking is one of Maren’s favorite activities, so she’s doing this for her. Elsa is almost ashamed she hasn’t hiked with her girlfriend more often, considering they’ve killed so many hours doing Elsa’s favorite thing (which always leaves Maren more antsy than not). Sure, they went on many hikes this past summer, sneakers gnawing up trails under the golden sun and the pink veil of dusk. But somehow, Elsa thinks, all she does for her girlfriend is never quite  _ enough. _ She could always do better, and even if Maren claims she’s at peak happiness, Elsa knows she still could do better for her even then.

The first forty-five minutes of the hike are blissful. There is plenty of space to walk on the path, but the pair walk close together anyway, brushing elbows and bumping hips. They also do that thing where they blindly graze hands until they manage to link their pinky fingers together. Elsa feels like a teenager (and the best possible way to feel like a teenager, she thinks, is in the carefree nature of teenage relationships). That leaves her wondering what Maren was like as a teen, and as a kid before that— and the long trail ahead allows more than enough time to daydream.

Close to an hour in, Maren breaks into the granola bars. She shrugs off one strap of the backpack and twists it around to access the zippered part. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist anymore. My stomach is  _ literally  _ caterwauling.” She tears into the box and retrieves one. “You want anything?”

“No, I’m okay.”

Maren glances at her for a moment, then looks away as she replaces the bag on her back. It’s an awkward fit over her puffy coat, but it works well enough. “Penny for your thoughts?”

Elsa smiles. Once Kristoff asked Anna that question, and the pettiness of her response was razor-sharp:  _ “Oh, so I’m not worth a dollar?”  _

She can’t help but wonder if Maren would find it weird that nearly this entire time, since they parked and started walking, Elsa’s been thinking about  _ her.  _ Most of the time Elsa dedicates her thoughts to people who are far away from her— and yes, of course Anna and Kristoff still dominate her mind a lot of the time— but isn’t it strange that she’s thinking so much about a girl as if she isn’t right here beside her? Elsa finds herself thinking about Maren’s hands as if they aren’t already hers to hold, and Maren’s hair as if it isn’t hers to stroke and weave into a million sloppy little braids.

So instead she answers: “Oh, I’m only daydreaming. Nickel for yours?”

Maren grins at her wit, but oddly the smirk fades the very next second. Before she can open her mouth, Elsa cuts in again with another shitty attempt at humor.

“Sorry, did you want a dime instead?”

“No, um—” Maren’s words cut off, and her mouth hangs open as her eyes dart to and fro, looking everywhere but at Elsa. She knows this means Maren is deliberating something, and this causes a spike of nerves to scrape at her stomach.

“... what?” Elsa asks.

“I— I need to tell you something,” Maren finally manages to get out. With front teeth embedded in her lower lip, she catches Elsa’s gaze.

“Okay...”

Maren guides her over to a boulder a foot off the trail. Quietly, they crunch over the thin layer of snow and sit down on the rock. The stone is icy cold and bites into Elsa’s backside like she’s touching it with her bare skin. Her tongue is weighed down, a million concerned questions firmly padlocked to it, so in lieu of an interrogation, Elsa waits for Maren to speak.

The brunette takes a deep breath and holds it a few seconds as if she’s taking a drag from a cigarette. The instant she lets it go, she launches into her spiel.  _ “Phew...  _ okay, I’ve— I’ve actually been meaning to tell you this for a while, but... well, I wasn’t sure  _ how  _ to break it to you. And to be fair, I’ve known for a while and I only just told Ry last week, so— so I’ve been nervous about how everyone would take the news, not just you.”

Elsa, still perplexed, only nods in response. Why would whatever Maren has to say possibly upset her? Obviously it didn’t tear Ryder apart; his bickering with his sister hasn’t gotten any worse in the past few days.

Maren smooths her hands over her denim-covered thighs, which are still smudged with black from her work on the wagon earlier. “You— you know how my whole experience with college went— I mean, it was basically no experience at all.”

“Yes,” Elsa says just to supply something to the discussion. “I know, and you were super bummed to drop out.”

“Well... a little while ago, I decided to talk to Aunt Yelena again about getting an education. And she knows how important it is to me, so we made a pact, and as long as I stick to it, she said not to worry about money, we can get loans. She said if I want a college degree, then I can pursue something in business so I can one day take over the shop and improve it. So... I looked into different schools, and I knew I wanted someplace different than before. And Snowbird, I was so inspired after visiting where your sister lives, so I knew I wanted to go somewhere a little farther away.” Maren curls her lips in, but right away it blossoms into a full-on smile. “Elsa, I applied and got into my first choice! I’m starting there for the spring semester.”

“Wha— oh my god, Honey, that’s amazing!” Elsa springs forward and yanks her into a tight hug. Into Maren’s shoulder, she mumbles, “What school is it? Where?”

Maren gives another giant exhale as they pull back from each other. “Okay, first, I just— I wanna make sure— you’re not mad I didn’t tell you about all this? ‘Cause, I mean, I’ve been working on this for a few months now, but...” She shakes her head in awe. “Nothing beats the look on your face right now.”

“You really wanted to surprise me, right?” Elsa chuckles. “Then yeah, you achieved exactly that.” Then Maren’s face sobers again, so she says, “But there’s more, right?”

“Right. So... the place I got accepted into is RPI— Rensselaer Polytechnic. It’s— it’s a pretty big deal, I’m planning to go there for a business and management degree— and the campus is gorgeous, Els, it’s in upstate New York so it’s far but not too far from here, and—”

“It’s in Troy,” Elsa interrupts.

Maren doesn’t catch the sudden paleness in Elsa’s face, nor the ghosts now taking up residence in her eyes. Instead she rambles on, swept up in a fantasy: “— yeah, Troy, New York. And Elsa, I want to ask you this, and I know it’s no small thing to ask of you, but... this will obviously be a long-term thing for me, four years, a- and... I see  _ you  _ as long-term too, very much long-term, and I know we haven’t known each other for a long time, but I- I think you feel the same way too, so... I was thinking you could move down there with me, we could get an apartment, and since your work is all online it would hopefully be an easy transition—”

“Maren, wait. Slow down,” Elsa mutters. The words are numb on her lips in the same way Maren’s hands in hers have gone cold. She severs their contact and turns away slightly.

“Sorry,” Maren sighs, still not understanding. “I’m sorry. I should’ve— I know this is a lot to throw at you all at once, and we haven’t been together that long, but— I think you’re feeling what I’m feeling, and that’s... it’s a different feeling than anything I’ve ever felt before.” When Elsa still won’t look at her, she tries to reach out and coax Elsa’s gaze back onto her, but the other leans farther away. “Elsa, what’s wrong?”

“Maren, I can’t live there. In Troy. Not there,” Elsa states simply.

“Why?” Maren asks, but she rethinks the forcefulness of it. “I mean— long-distance isn’t ideal, but it’s only three hours away... I just thought—”

Elsa closes her eyes and tries to control her breaths. She knows this is how Maren gets when she’s excited about something; she just puts on the blinders and continues burrowing through her tunnel without checking around her for possible weak spots. Then because of that, things collapse. 

To be fair, though, Elsa never told her much about her birth parents and the accident. And now Maren has unintentionally cornered her into revealing more, if not all, of what happened— and Elsa has to do this, because Maren deserves to know the truth, deserves an explanation. She shouldn’t be subjected to Elsa freezing her out. And yet—

“I... I don’t think I ever said specifically where Anna and I are from, where we were born, where our birth parents...”

“Oh, shit.” Maren grits her teeth. “You guys are from Troy?”

Elsa can barely look at her, so she chooses to close her eyes again and press them into her fists. She tries to imagine herself being there again, after years and years— but no, she  _ can’t.  _ She can’t do it. The crash happened on a main street, there’s no way to avoid that road coming into town, and even if they settled somewhere on the opposite end of the city from where they used to live, she knows it would plague her mind, eat up her brain like a disease. Every time she’d close her eyes to go to sleep, she would see the emergency lights flashing past through the daycare window. Every time she would drive around, she would be reminded of the sterile backseat of the unfamiliar car she and Anna were ushered into, a car that wasn’t their parents’ car, because that was reduced to a twisted heap of metal. She couldn’t do it. She  _ wouldn’t  _ do it.

“I- I just can’t be there,” Elsa chokes out, shaking her head rapidly. She barely registers the weight of a comforting arm around her shoulders. “I won’t do it. I’m sorry, Mare, I love you, but... I’m staying here.”

She risks cracking her eyelids open, and through a haze of tears she sees Maren nod solemnly. “I get it,” she says. “So... long-distance it is.”

Elsa tries to shove a smile onto her face, but it just isn’t happening. In place of that, she forces a cheery tone instead. “It won’t be so bad. And you can drive up and visit often enough— like you said, it’s only three hours.”

Maren stares at the ground and kicks around a pebble with her boot. “I know, it’s just...  _ god,  _ I hate long-distance. I’ve done it once before and— well, being far apart is the reason we broke up.”

Elsa remembers being told this, and she hates how much about Maren she knows (like that this ex was named Idina, and that she lived in Michigan) only because it sorely shows how minimal Maren’s knowledge of Elsa’s past is, and that’s nobody’s fault but Elsa’s.

And even worse is that she  _ knows  _ this all is so avoidable. Moving would be a breeze for her— she did just renew her lease for another six months, but this move wouldn’t be for another couple months and Mattias is understanding. Her work  _ is  _ all online, so there would be virtually no transition period, just as long as she had Internet and her computer. And she would be overjoyed to live full-time with Maren, to have a place they both can call their own, so that neither would have to leave their own home to stay at the other’s all the time, which is basically what they do now. It could be so easy, if only it wasn’t...  _ there.  _ The one place on the planet Elsa never wants to go to again.

All Elsa wants to do now is make things better, as best as they can be for now. She knows slapping on a band-aid won’t make things feel better forever, but for now it’s the best damage control she can manage. “Well,” she tries, “you might’ve never dated me if things worked out for you two.”

_ Well, fuck,  _ she thinks.  _ Way to go, Elsa. Instead of slapping on a band-aid, you just slapped her in the face.  _

Before she has the chance to sputter out something to reverse that blunder, Maren jumps up from the boulder and spins around to glare down at her, tears glistening at the corners of her pretty honey eyes. “I’m—” She groans and throws her arms up in the air. “Well, I  _ am  _ going there, because next month I’m gonna be 29 and I want to have accomplished something in my life before I’m too old to care.”

Elsa deflates. It’s difficult to imagine Maren ever  _ not  _ having the vigor to complete what she sets her mind to.

“So I’m sorry that place hurts you so much, and I’m sorry I’ll be going somewhere so triggering, somewhere you’ll never be able to visit me, and I... I feel so...” She hugs herself and blinks rapidly, looking up at the sky. “I— I just need time to think this over.”

Elsa nods. She doesn’t like the newfound sag in Maren’s posture, nor the abrupt dullness in her gaze. Her hair, recently lustrous and alive in Elsa’s fingers, now hangs in the limpest, saddest braid Elsa has ever seen.

“Okay,” she says. And wordlessly, the two make the decision to turn around early and trek back to the car.


	9. sunday, january 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is also known as "anna knocks some sense into elsa because i want to resolve things and elsa deserves to be happy."
> 
> but i thought that title was too long, so *shrugs*
> 
> anyway, here's a new chapter for y'all, much sooner than last time! please know that i'm not overly pleased with the direction i've taken things, but i'm trying my best to bring this story to a satisfying close for you guys. i love you all a lot for the amazing comments and kudos, so you deserve the best i can give you <3
> 
> see you next time, at the end of the road :) (next chapter has a surprise pov! can you guess who?)

yeah, life sure can try to put love through it, but

we built this right, so nothing's ever gonna move it

\- maren morris & hozier, "the bones"

* * *

“It’s just— well, I fail to see how it’s impossible for you guys to reach  _ any  _ compromise at all.”

Elsa takes a breath and holds it for a moment; sometimes she wishes breathing wasn’t a required thing, because she honestly feels like she doesn’t deserve the oxygen. She knows Anna is right— a compromise does exist, probably. But at this point they’re a few weeks out from the spring semester, and Maren has already signed a lease on an apartment upstate with a roommate she connected with online, and Maren hasn’t looked her in the eyes in the same way since October.

In the slightly-less-judgmental shelter of her sister’s kitchen, Elsa leans against the counter and stares forlornly at her feet. Opposite her, Anna is perched on the island, swinging her more cheerful feet and tossing treats for Sven to catch midair. Elsa’s bones could commiserate with the baby carrots currently cracking under Sven’s jaws; it feels like frustration is nibbling away at her from the inside out.

“There’s just no way for me to live anywhere near there,” Elsa says, knowing she’s repeating herself for the thousandth time. “Even the next town over, or something. It’s too triggering. And I know she knows that and appreciates that, and there was no way she could’ve known that of all the places—”

“Els, sweetie, do I have to remind you what the definition of ‘compromise’ is?” Anna cuts in. She flicks one final carrot off its launching pad (her thumb) and it twirls through the sunny afternoon air, landing in its salivating grave a moment later. “Sometimes,” Anna begins without leaving space for Elsa to scoff, “compromise does mean reaching a solution that makes both parties happy. It also means  _ sacrificing  _ certain things, and those certain things may or may not include overall happiness and wellbeing. And yeah, that sounds dark, but it’s the truth. And sis, you have to keep in mind how  _ wonderful  _ Maren is, and how over the moon she makes you in literally every other aspect of your relationship.”

Elsa blinks at her, again left wondering if her little sister has  _ any  _ faults at all. She chews on the inside of her cheek, choosing not to answer right away— because depending on which path she chooses to take with her choice of words, this could turn into an argument.

“Part of good, healthy loving is it being unconditional loving. It’s up to you, though, whether you want it to be unconditional or not. Otherwise, you can let little things weigh you down.”

_ Weigh me down like an anchor, then I’ll eventually sink,  _ Elsa laments to herself. “But—” she stops and tries to tone down her bullish undertone. “Anna, this isn’t just a ‘little thing’ for me. Not that  _ you _ would—” She stops again, and if looks alone could incite actions, Anna would have Elsa pinned up against the wall (or maybe hanging from the ceiling fan). 

“Just because I don’t remember living there doesn’t make it less of a big deal for me. Believe me, Troy would not be my first choice to live knowing what happened there. And I do understand it’s a bit worse for you, Elsa— trust me, I get it. But it was years ago, and even if your resulting wounds aren’t completely healed yet, they’re at least scabbed over, right?” At Elsa’s reluctant nod, Anna straightens a bit more, her face hardening. Where anybody else might look anxious to dig up buried issues, her sister appears endlessly confident— it’s the lawyer in her, Elsa knows, that makes her excel at intense conversations like this one.

“Now, I... I need you to hear me out, okay, Els? Promise me you’ll listen.”

Elsa feels like she might as well be under oath here. Should she go throw on a blouse and skirt, rest her hand on a bible, and let her mind draw an imaginary courtroom around them? “I... I promise,” she says doubtfully.

“You never—” Anna pauses and rearranges her words from an accusation to a question. “Did you ever— maybe— read the letter I gave you, the day I graduated high school? I know it was a million years ago, but... it really did have some important stuff in it.”

Years. It’s been years and years and someday Elsa knew this would come back up, come crawling like a zombie back up out of its grave where it should’ve stayed. But they’re not children— they weren’t then (though Anna very much acted like one), and they aren’t now. So Elsa admits the truth while hunching her shoulders.

“Sounds like you were starting to answer that question correctly,” she says, because Anna knows very well what that implies.

“Okay,” the redhead sighs, sweeping a bundle of hair over her shoulder. She slides down off the counter, landing with a little bounce as if the hardwood floor is made of rubber. Even now Anna can’t go without a little pep in her step; it prods at a distant memory from high school, when Anna was disheartened because she didn’t land the lead role of Elle in the school’s production of  _ Legally Blonde. “They wanted an actual blonde,”  _ Anna had told her, the picture of melancholy as she jealously played with one of Elsa’s platinum locks.  _ “Mr. Buck was even calling me Red Witherspoon, but ‘blonde’ is in the title and wigs just aren’t good enough, apparently. Now Hans thinks I should dye my hair.”  _ At that, Elsa had opened her mouth to interject with a  _ “don’t,”  _ but then Anna abruptly perked up and announced,  _ “Or... and this is just spitballing here, but... what if I one-up everybody by becoming a real lawyer just like Elle?”  _

_ “That’s no easy feat.” _

_ “Well, I think I’m up for the challenge,”  _ Anna had said with a shrug.  _ “It can’t be that bad.” _

Elsa remembers gazing at her and thinking,  _ For you, it won’t be bad at all, and if it does get bad, you’ll know exactly what to do because you always know.  _ Out loud, she said,  _ “You’ll never know unless you try.”  _

Back in the all-too-demanding present, her sister snaps her fingers in front of Elsa’s nose to summon some much needed awareness. “Elsa,” Anna says, her serious tone fully dragging Elsa back to reality. “I’m going to tell you what was in that letter, because its contents will always be... well, it’s pretty much engraved into my brain. You need—”

Elsa’s stomach hollows out and her veins run dry. She presses back into the counter, ignores Sven’s nuzzling at her ankles, and lets the panic vomit itself out of her like she’s possessed. “Please, Anna, no, I don’t want to hear about it, I  _ can’t,  _ it’ll just make it worse and—”

_ “No,”  _ Anna cuts in. Her eyes are wide, pleading, and with a step forward she takes her sister’s hands and clasps them to her chest. “You  _ need  _ to know this, Elsa. If it can provide  _ any  _ comfort at all, even just a crumb, I want you to have that solace. At this point, I can’t see how it would make things worse. Please hear me out.”

She looks at Anna’s face; then she looks  _ into  _ Anna’s face, allowing herself to get ensnared in a desperate pair of baby blues. And though it physically pains her to give in, being in direct contact with her sister makes it a lot better. Even the briefest of hugs with Anna automatically trump the years of therapy Elsa has pushed herself through.

So when she quits protesting, Anna tentatively presses onward. “There was a man named Kenneth Runeard,” she murmurs, holding Elsa’s shuddering body close and perching her chin on the other’s shoulder. “And that night, he was the other driver involved in the... in the crash. But—” She pauses, swallows hard enough for her throat to press into Elsa’s collarbone. “But the thing is, the crash, it— it wasn’t an accident.”

Elsa’s veins are now filled again, but this time with ice water. Her entire body goes numb. As expected, when her eyes briefly pop open and blink through the sheen of tears and Anna’s frizzy hair blocking her vision, she watches the kitchen gradually succumb to the same frost she feels eating up her body.

“That day— November 22, 1998— he fled the scene. It took them nearly twelve years to find him, and thanks to DNA evidence of blood and fingerprints found at the crime scene, they arrested him about a year before I sent the inquiry. And... and then they took him in for questioning, and he said—” Anna draws in a shaky breath. The persistent hitch in her voice is unmistakable. “He said he— he ran their car off the road, very much on purpose. He said, and  _ god,  _ I don’t wanna repeat this... but he said people like our mother are freaks of nature, and that if she stayed alive any longer, then... then it would only bring harm to others... the cops didn’t believe him, of course, but—”

Elsa yanks herself away from Anna, who has a steady waterfall of tears going down both cheeks at this point. Viciously she seeks eye contact, and the moment Anna relents she snaps, “And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Anna bites down on her lip hard enough to make blood well up. “He said—” But then she stops short, and her gaze is everywhere except on Elsa. It takes half a second for the bone-zapping realization to hit her: Anna is taking in the thickening layer of ice currently shimmering over the walls of her and Kristoff’s normally warm and bright kitchen. When her eyes finally find Elsa’s again, the latter is stunned to see nothing resembling fear or confusion there. And then, nearly a minute after she left the words hanging in the air, Anna murmurs, “— it was... this.”

“What?” Elsa asks, the question snapping off her tongue like a closing mouse trap, a reflex.

“Runeard told the police that— that our mom created ice from her hands.” Anna swallows, blinking hard as she fixes Elsa with a soul-pinning stare. “How long?” she whispers, gesturing around at the magic glittering all around them. “How long have you known you have what she had?” The way her arms flop back down, the way her shoulders droop, the way she deflates— it breaks Elsa’s heart.  _ Wow, nothing can surprise her anymore. _

But in typical Elsa fashion— and she’s already kicking herself as she’s asking this— she steers the conversation away from herself. “Do— do you have it too? The power?”

“No,” Anna says right away. “But... I always wondered if one of us would.” Another pause, then “When did you first notice it?”

“A little over a year ago,” Elsa tells her. “Actually, it was right when I met Maren for the first time.” Just saying  _ her  _ name makes Elsa ache all over.

A long minute of silence follows, during which the most wistful of smiles grows on Anna’s face. Eventually, Elsa’s sister reaches for her hands again and says, “You know, you always used to tell me how Mom never felt the same after she met Dad.”

Elsa’s jaw hangs open; Anna’s words, combined with a particular faded memory, hit her like a textbook to the face. This memory is  _ very  _ faded, like an old Polaroid print that’s sat out in the sun for ages— but it’s there. “She— she was changed forever,” Elsa mutters—

_ — their mother, Iduna, tucking them into bed, flicking long brunette hair over her shoulder (a mannerism that Anna very clearly inherited) and finishing off the age-old story that was better than any fairytale to the girls, and in fact was a fairytale for them: “When I met your papa, I—” _

_ “How did it feel, mommy?” _

_ “I— I froze up, my darlings. I felt... frozen, frozen in the best way possible.” _

_ “What do you mean?” _

_ “Well, sometimes life can tell when you need to live in a moment for a little bit longer than normal, and so time will slow down, slow to the slightest trickle, so that you can stay there and you can realize something very important. And that’s what happened when I met your father.” _

Now, a million eons later, Elsa looks at Anna and her little sister chuckles. “I think Maren must be pretty special, Els.”

“Yeah...” Elsa breathes, nodding slowly. “I think so, too.”

Then, with the forceful freedom of so much weight lifted off her shoulders, Elsa surges forward and pulls Anna into yet another embrace, far from their first and far from their last. “I love you,” she sniffles into her shoulder. “Thank you for being my voice of reason. Seriously.”

Anna giggles. “I love you too, but... something must be wrong if you’re looking to  _ me  _ as the voice of reason—”

Elsa cups her sister’s cheeks and pinches them, something she knows she hates.  _ “Hey.  _ I said  _ seriously,  _ Anna, let’s be serious here.” A laugh escapes from in between her words anyway, and it reduces them both to blubbering, teary, laughing messes.

This is how Kristoff finds them a few minutes later. He arrives home, initiating a volley of barks from Sven which provide a backing chorus for the obnoxious  _ “Honey, I’m homeeee!”  _ he belts out as he marches into the kitchen and sets the grocery bags on the counter.

He stops short upon seeing their emotional state, however. But instead of an expression of dismay or concern, to Elsa’s surprise an all-knowing look emerges in his eyes (the same look Olaf gets on his furry face when she holds deep one-sided conversations with him).

Anna goes over to peck him on the cheek and help him start unloading things into the cupboards and fridge. Elsa picks up her forgotten tea, which has gone lukewarm thanks to the frost that has now receded from the walls.

“What’s that look for?” Anna asks her husband when he still hasn’t budged after a minute. She stands in the center of the room with a package of Oreos in her hands, brow quirked.

“Well— I mean—” Kristoff gulps. His gaze flits back and forth from one sister to the other. “You just told Elsa the news, right? That’s why you two were acting super excited and crying a lot when I came in.”

Anna catches on right away, but Elsa is still lost. “Wha—” she starts, but it’s overshadowed by Anna’s squeaked “Oh!”

He continues rambling on, a deep scarlet spreading through his face. “I dunno, I just thought we were gonna wait to tell her and Maren about it. A niece or nephew is a pretty big deal, but you just went and told her without me, huh?” He sighs and crosses his arms. “What about that whole big reveal we had planned—”

Finally Anna interrupts his rant with a rapid headshake. “No,” she says, sounding more amused than annoyed. “No, I didn’t—”

Kristoff bites his tongue. “Oh.  _ Oh.  _ I— I just ruined it, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Yes, you did,” Anna says. She facepalms herself and turns to address her sister. “This isn’t how we planned to tell you, but... yeah, it’s true!” 

Elsa drops her cup of tea.

At this point, it’s like instinct for her, so she doesn’t think twice when she shoots out a slide of ice to catch the cup on its way down. Upon witnessing this, Anna’s eyes balloon three sizes and the Oreos tumble from her hands; with a straight face Elsa extends the ice so it also rescues the cookies from hitting the floor in a crumbly mess.

Kristoff just stands there; Elsa didn’t have time to stop his jaw from hitting the floor, but it doesn’t stay there long, anyway. “Did— did you just— she—”

“Well,” Elsa says, bending to pick up both the dropped items and placing them out of harm’s way. “So far, you both are reacting better than Ryder did. He pretty much booked it out of the room.” But her power is the absolute last thing on her mind right now. As soon as the last couple words roll off her tongue, Elsa is zooming across the room and hopping over the ice to pull her sister and brother-in-law into a bone-splintering hug.

“Phew,” Kristoff pants when they’re permitted to breathe again. “There is a  _ lot  _ going on right now.”

“This is  _ wonderful  _ news, guys! Oh my god!” Elsa laughs. She’s hugged Anna so much today she can’t be sure if maybe they’re permanently attached to each other now. “This is amazing.”

The three spend several mindless, gleeful minutes gushing over babies and everything under that category: names (we love him, but please,  _ anything  _ but Agnarr), due date (end of the summer), gender (Sven wants a little sister, but that’s just what Sven wants), Sven’s possible jealousy (he’s been an only child his whole life, okay?). But before long Kristoff has to address the other elephant in the room: “Elsa, was... was the Frozone thing you did back there— does that have anything to do with what happened to your bouquet at the wedding?”

Elsa dips her head. “Yeah... um,” her gaze flashes to Anna, “I happened to be staring at Maren, and my flowers were kind of eaten up by ice right before you walked down the aisle.”

At hearing this, Anna pouts. “Are you kidding me? So I was really the last one to know about this?”

“Hey,” Elsa protests. “I get a free pass for this one since you didn’t tell me you were pregnant the second you found out.”

Anna rolls her eyes. “Fair enough.”

* * *

When Elsa drives back up north later, one thought is consistently pulsing in her mind:  _ she was like me. Mom was like me!  _

Of course, that doesn’t exactly dispel the disgust swirling in her belly because of that Runeard guy. But he’s gone, securely locked up, and apparently transferred out of New York to an out-of-state prison some time ago, Anna was quick to assure her.

However, it also means that so many questions will always be left unanswered, like  _ how  _ did that fuckwad know her parents and when did he ever witness Iduna’s... ability? Elsa let the untold truth fester for so many years in her mind, and though finally knowing it makes her feel better, it also leaves her emptier. 

Then she crosses over into Vermont, and all of that melts away to leave one core element: Maren.

Rather than going straight home, Elsa turns her car down the gravel pathway leading to Northuldra Ski Supply. The car hasn’t been parked five seconds before she hops out and runs into the shop, because judging by the time of day, she’ll be spot-on about who exactly is in there at this precise moment.

She pounds up the stairs and into the warm little building. The January chill is sucked away behind her as she lets the door slam. Instantly her head jerks to the right, where a stunned silent Maren is standing behind the register. With a somewhat manic giggle, Elsa tears off her hat, unravels her scarf, and swats off her gloves. Then she launches herself forward, clearing the counter in a sloppy jump, after which Maren catches her like they’re rehearsing the final piece of a complicated choreography number.

Still Maren says nothing to her, so Elsa stomps down on the silence with a ferocious kiss, one for the top-ten books, one that leaves both their mouths swollen and tender when they pull apart. Then Maren tries to say something, bewilderment creasing her features: “Elsa, I—”

Elsa holds up a palm and presses it into Maren’s chest. “Honey,” she pants, smiling ear-to-ear, “Honeymaren Nattura, I love you. So much. Fuck, I love you so much. I have spent my  _ entire  _ life wishing and wanting and feeling sorry for myself, then you come along and you just— you’re my every wish, you’re  _ all  _ of my wants, and you make me so  _ happy  _ for myself, because anyone who has you should be—”

Maren stops her with her version of a breathless kiss. Elsa feels like her lungs are burning, slipping right up out of her into the sky, and it’s wonderful. Making out in full view of any unsuspecting customer who could walk into the shop is about as wise as grabbing a chef’s knife blade first, but Elsa couldn’t care less; and from the way Maren is pushing her up onto the counter, knocking over a few jars of keychains and maple candies, she has a distinct feeling Maren couldn’t give less of a shit either.

When they reach the point where the only way forward is clothes off, they tear themselves away from each other. Yes, in theory they  _ could  _ have sex right here, right now, surrounded by dusty cans of baked beans and neon-colored ski helmets, but of course that would be the one time the store would actually be graced by the presence of a customer.

“Sorry to interrupt, Snowbird,” Maren mumbles, keeping their foreheads pressed together. She nips Elsa’s lip one last tantalizing time, and it’s all Elsa can do to not pull her back in.

“It’s okay,” Elsa replies, shutting her eyes against the molten intensity of Maren’s gaze. “I was only gonna say— again— that I love you, and that I don’t wanna leave Arendelle, because it’s a lovely little cabin in the woods, but Maren, if I’m leaving Arendelle for  _ you...  _ then that’s all the reason I need. I’m sorry I didn’t see it before.”

Any remaining sultriness is wiped clean off Maren’s face like a dry erase board. It’s a crappy, smudgy dry erase board, though, because Elsa can still pinpoint some heated adoration lingering behind her girlfriend’s mask of surprise.

“Elsa, I appreciate that, I really do,” Maren says, her brows scrunching together. “But— but I understand everything you said, about why you would never want to set foot anywhere near there. I- I may not have showed it as much as I should have, but I do get it. I don’t want to make you live somewhere you don’t want to.”

“No, it’s okay,” Elsa says. “I mean— it’s not okay, not completely, and what happened will never be okay, but I’m working on living with it. I want to compromise with you. God knows I need to wander outside of my comfort zone. I can’t stand the thought of being away from you, Mare. I think that alone would drive me crazier than anything else.” She pauses to check how this is sinking in with Maren, but suddenly she’s near impossible to read. Cautiously Elsa proceeds, “And I know it’s too late for you to change anything for this semester, but for the next one and the one after that, and the one after that...” Maren smirks and she laughs, face burning. “I wanna be there for all of them.”

“You’re... you’re totally sure?”

Elsa nods.

“Completely, totally, sure? Like one hundred and  _ ten  _ percent sure?”

“Yes, Honey. Really, I am.”

The dent between Maren’s brows smooths over, replaced by smiling quotation marks at the corners of her eyes. “I don’t get it, Elsa. Why the change of heart?”

Elsa blows out a breath. “Yeah... there’s a  _ lot  _ I have to tell you. I don’t even know where to begin, to be honest.”

“I take it your visit with Anna was an eventful one?”

“Understatement of the century,” Elsa snorts. Then she brings her lips to Maren’s one more time, a kiss that’s far from their first and far from their last.

Some time later— minutes or hours, Elsa couldn’t tell— the shop is still quiet, but Maren says something to her which confirms a feeling that Elsa is already very sure of.

“I was standing here”— Maren’s lips hum and dance along Elsa’s jaw, throat, collarbone— “right here in this spot behind the register the very first time I saw you.” She laughs. “I never thought I’d fall in love here— right  _ here,  _ in this spot.” Then her face sobers, and her gaze narrows as her face returns to Elsa’s level.  _ “Et toujours, tes yeux sont indescriptibles, mon trésor.”  _

Damn it, Elsa  _ really  _ wishes she remembered high school French. In return, she can only offer an apologetic wince and say, “I know it’s getting late, but... do you wanna go skiing?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **french translation:  
> “Et toujours, tes yeux sont indescriptibles, mon trésor.” = "And still, your eyes are indescribable, my treasure."  
> (please correct me as needed, thank you!)


	10. thursday, november 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and finally we reach the end. i had such a great time writing this story - it wouldn't have been nearly as fun if it weren't for you guys, though. your loyal feedback and kudos is what kept me going, so please know how much i appreciate y'all. this is probably going to be my last fic for the frozen/elsamaren fandom, but never say never! 
> 
> i took a lot of creative liberty with this fic, and kind of went nuts with the real-world world-building. the area elsa moves to in vermont is directly based off of the place my family and i travel to every summer. we're not skiiers, but we adore warren and the nearby towns of waitsfield and waterbury. if any of you ever make it up there, have a pint of ben & jerry's in elsa's honor! (i also strongly recommend visiting three mountain cafe in waitsfield, their chocolate croissants are wonderful!)
> 
> in the end, though, i still wasn't able to find a way to include every last detail i originally intended. for example, i wanted to squeeze in a mini "redemption" arc for anna and elsa's adoptive parents, maybe connect it more with the hans debacle, and have anna grapple more with being a divorcee at 20. it just didn't happen, though, and that's fine - but still, just so you know what could've been!
> 
> ANYWAY. thanks again to each and every one of you for following this story since december. you have all of my love. this has been a wonderful (and sometimes stressful) fandom to be a part of. if any of you wanna come yell with me on [tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/bookreader525) about dogs and pretty girls and other nice things, feel free. and please try to stay safe and stay healthy in these difficult times. i present to you my final offering of quarantine reading! enjoy :)

she's just so nice to look at

\- dodie, "she" (+additional lyrics later in chapter)

* * *

_ December 2019 _

When Honeymaren wakes up that morning, it’s a clear day, so she pours herself an extra cup of coffee just for luck. Maybe putting a little caffeine-induced pep in her step will help the shop bring in the three hundred they’ll need to pay the electric bill. Or maybe not. Probably not.

She stands in her and Ryder’s freezing cold kitchen, staring out the window over the sink. Normally, she thinks, a hot mug of coffee is supposed to warm the entire body, but the heat stays in her hands this morning, leaving the rest of her cold. At the edge of the aged windowpane, through a prickly copse of pine, she sees the new-to-her truck parked on the thinned-out gravel. Aunt Yelena persuaded her to purchase the handsome Ford a month ago— not their wisest decision, but Aunt Yel has never been the best with financial matters. Things used to be better before the big ski store nearby opened in the late nineties. Now she only ever realizes money is getting low right when they’re about to dip into the stormy sea of bankruptcy. It’s the one way she falls short as both a business and family leader, so recently Maren has taken it upon herself to work out their finances. 

And anyway, Maren is pretty sure the main reason Aunt Yel wanted her to get the truck— besides the three of them having to share the antique wagon for way too long— is because of the recent death of Maren and Ryder’s cat, Gale. They had her since they were twelve, when they found the hapless brown tabby kitten on the front steps of the shop in the rain and pleaded with their aunt to let them keep her. It took twenty very long minutes to convince her, but eventually Aunt Yel gave in with a sigh and a grumbled  _ “Fine.”  _ (Maren always knew they would prevail, because their aunt’s soft spot for animals is well-known. Every now and then she’ll regale them with tales of the gorgeous blue roan stallion, Nokk, that she grew up alongside.) Needless to say, there’s no doubt Aunt Yel got tired of seeing the twins moping around about Gale, so it’s no wonder she wanted to gift them with grief presents. For Maren, it was the truck, and for Ryder, a new Switch.

And now— surprise, surprise— here they are with barely anything left over to satiate their always-starving bills. Sometimes Maren looks at her truck and, now that she finally has it, she thinks often of stuffing some of her things in a duffel and just driving away. In some versions of her fantasy, Ryder is with her, but in others he isn’t, and it bothers her that her subconscious would betray her so. The thought of leaving her brother behind stabs into her like a knife, but it never fully ebbs away. Every night she spends alone in their quiet cabin in the months since she and Idina broke up, and he’s with his boyfriend, Maren seriously considers leaving. 

Maren swishes a bit of water through her now empty mug and leaves it in the sink. God, she swears sometimes she was born in the wrong time. She yearns to live back in a time when there weren’t bills to be paid, when there was nothing around her but nature and the open sky. Now she feels like the sky is closed off and she has nobody here but herself, and that certainly isn’t enough. 

She tugs way harder than necessary on her hair when she teases it into Dutch braids, and yanks enough bracelets onto her arms to cut off her circulation. Then, with nothing but store-brand medium roast swirling an uneasy whirlpool in her stomach, Maren heads out and sets off across the slushy pathway over to the store. She mounts the steps, peers around for a sodden, lost kitten like she has for the past sixteen years, and unlocks the door, flipping the sign to open as she goes in.

No customers materialize for the first several hours.  _ Typical,  _ Maren thinks, and she throws herself into straightening up the miniscule back room. Lunch comes and goes, but she doesn’t eat. She keeps working because when she works, she doesn’t have to think. Anytime she pauses, thoughts come rushing back to her, and she has to pick them up and shove them back in the overstuffed filing cabinet in her mind. Then when those are put away, she resumes picking up the actual physical mess in front of her. When did they let this place get so messy?

She’s so caught up in it, at first she doesn’t hear the distant jingle from the bell over the door. Then after about a minute it sinks in, and with a hushed sigh Maren finishes rolling up the sleeves of her red and tan flannel and goes out front to take in the rare sighting of an actual living customer.

But then Maren’s small, dusty world comes to a screeching halt, as do her feet. She pauses in the threshold between the back room and behind the counter, the soles of her boots trembling over the threadbare carpet.

This isn’t just any customer— she’s beautiful. Maren hasn’t felt a feeling like this, like the bristling heat spreading in her chest, in a while. The stranger is bundled up in a jacket far too thin for December in Vermont, along with a fashionable scarf that looks like it came from a chic boutique far away from here. Long blonde hair, the palest and sleekest blonde hair Maren has ever seen, spills over her shoulders and neatly mingles with the delicate fringe at the ends of the scarf. The girl still hasn’t noticed Maren yet— she’s too busy examining a snowflake-shaped pewter keychain at the counter— but already Maren can catch the deep blue of her eyes, a blue that’s noticeable from the slightest of angles and farthest of distances.

Drawing in a deep breath, Maren pulls herself together and steps up to her side of the counter. “Hello!” she says, her voice coming out more pitchy than she expected. In fact, she’d been mentally preparing to pour all the fake customer-service-cheerfulness she could into her greeting, but realized that she didn’t have to force it for this girl. It just... came naturally. Maren can’t recall the last time  _ that  _ happened.

The girl startles at Maren’s voice, which makes Maren cringe inwardly, but the girl doesn’t run, which is at least a good sign. Those sharp cobalt eyes flick up to meet Maren’s, and that’s it. Maren poured herself an extra cup of coffee this morning for luck, and although this wasn’t the type of luck she had in mind, she couldn’t be any more grateful to whoever is watching over her and playing the pieces on the gameboard of her life.

The temperature in the room seems to dip suddenly, and, resisting kicking the counter in annoyance, Maren reminds herself to tell Ryder about that stupid faulty thermostat later. Then, finally, the girl returns her smile, and all is right in Maren’s small, dusty world which has just grown exponentially. 

* * *

_ Present Day _

Anna groans out a noise that must resemble relief, if it’s to match her body language as she throws herself down on the nearest sofa. Kristoff comes bustling through the door just behind her, armed with baby carriers in both hands. Because of all his luggage— including backpacks strapped over his heaving back and chest— he is forced to waddle through the doorway sideways. He continues the awkward motion all the way into Ryder’s living room, where the others are staring at him with a mixture of amusement and mild concern. Sven careens excitedly around the corner into the heart of the house, tail swinging back and forth like a whip (Maren has to dive to save a vase of flowers from toppling). Olaf prances up and licks Sven’s nose; meanwhile, Bruni flees immediately, not to be seen for the remainder of the evening.

“Jeez, Anna, you could’ve at least helped him carry  _ one  _ bag,” Elsa chides, rushing over to remove the heavy bags from her brother-in-law’s surely aching shoulders.

“He looks all geared up to hike to the summit of Everest,” Maren observes, making sure to elbow her brother so that her attempt at humor is appreciated.

Ryder sets down his drink and snorts. He steps back into the kitchen, where he’s been preparing the most Ryder-like Thanksgiving feast Elsa can think of: frozen pizza, pancakes, and a shit ton of hot wings. Somehow, though, it all works together when paired with the finest semi-decent wine Oaken’s had to offer.

“Hey, hold on! I was going to carry stuff,” Anna starts, and Kristoff finishes for her, “— but I offered to instead.”

“More like  _ insisted,”  _ Anna continues with an affectionate eye roll aimed at her husband. “But believe me when I say I tried to help.”

Kristoff grunts as he bends down to gently set both baby carriers on the rug. “This was the kids’ first long car trip, and Anna dealt with practically all the meltdowns the entire seven hours. Carrying all the stuff in from the car is the  _ least  _ I could do to make things even.”

Anna stands up briefly to plant a kiss on his temple, then promptly yanks him down to sprawl on the couch with her. Maren wanders back from the kitchen and deposits well-earned glasses of wine in their hands. “You know you don’t ever have to make things even, hon. I like how  _ odd  _ you are,” Anna assures him, tangling her fingers in the sweaty blond locks at the nape of his neck.

“Well, speaking of the kids and long car trips,” Elsa says. “How did it go? Were there really a lot of meltdowns?”

“Kinda, yeah,” Anna sighs. “At first Aspen was a little angel, then Archer started kicking up a fuss, and I guess his behavior rubbed off on her. Nearly the entire last hour they were both freaking out. It got to the point Sven was howling along with them.”

Kristoff leans forward and pulls the carriers toward the couch; despite the chaos involved with getting in the house, both twins are now soundly asleep. “I guess that’s what we get for cramming a couple of four-month-olds in the car during their most active time of the day.”

“Well, now you’re all here and you can all rest, and that’s what matters the most.” Elsa perches herself next to her sister, bending down to stroke a few blonde wisps off Aspen’s forehead. Sven watches her carefully, sitting in a protective stance beside Archer’s carrier.

“No,” Anna corrects, “what matters the most is that Maren and Ryder are officially old!” She jabs a gleeful finger in the elder twins’ direction and if it weren’t for the snoozing younger twins, she would probably be cackling. “I’m officially the only one here not in my thirties! You all can suck it!”

Ryder hangs his head and groans. “Ugh, don’t remind me.” Since their birthday yesterday, it seems like he and Maren have been reminded nonstop about the apparent end of their youth. The only good thing about their birthday falling right before Thanksgiving this year is that he was allowed to come up with his own menu for dinner at his place.  _ “Screw turkey,”  _ he told Elsa earlier.  _ “Turkey is out, chicken wings are in. And don’t worry, I’ll put some Thanksgiving-y spices on them. Like, nutmeg and rosemary or whatever.”  _ Needless to say, Elsa is a bit worried about dinner, and has the local Chinese food restaurant on speed dial just in case.

“Hey, wait, Aspen and Archer aren’t in their thirties either,” Maren points out.

Elsa raises a brow at her sister’s childish proclamation. She doesn’t blame Maren one bit for grouping Anna with the babies. “Okay, listen, turning 30 is not that bad. I don’t know why everyone acts like it’s the worst.”

“It is the worst, believe me,” Ryder laments, slouching on the worn leather armchair opposite the couch. “There’s no way they’ll still let me order chicken fingers from the kids’ menu at restaurants anymore. I definitely look too old now! Not to mention, I  _ swear _ I found a gray hair this morning.”

“Shut up, Ry, the chicken fingers ship sailed years ago,” Maren snorts. “As for the gray hair, though—”

“Shut up, Honey Mustard,” Ryder shoots back lamely, but the insult is enough to earn him an affronted look from his sister. “Besides, you’re technically older than me, right? So you should be seeing plenty of gray hairs before I do.”

Maren opens her mouth to snipe back, but Elsa cuts in, hopping up and throwing an arm around her girlfriend’s shoulders. “I have an idea!” she blurts. “Let’s— let’s, uh, not talk about that anymore.”

_ “Great  _ idea,” Kristoff chuckles. “Hate to break it to you guys, but you aren’t setting the best twins example for our kids.” 

Anna shrugs. “Well, at least they’re keeping things interesting, right?”

The two of them and Ryder break off into their own conversation, and then an actual, better idea comes to Elsa. After confirming that it’ll still be a while until dinner, she takes Maren’s hand and motions for her to follow her upstairs.

“Don’t tell me this is another birthday present,” Maren says as they hike up the narrow staircase. “Because you gave me  _ plenty  _ already, Snowbird.”

“Okay, I won’t tell you then,” Elsa replies, struggling to hide the smile in her tone. She steers Maren into the room that used to be hers when she lived here with Ryder. It’s almost completely vacant now, all of the belongings currently sitting in their apartment in New York. But it’s still furnished with memories, and Elsa sees them everywhere she looks. That’s why she wanted this to happen here.

They stand in the center of the space, and Elsa closes her eyes to steady herself. When she opens them again, Maren is staring at her, the smirk on her face crooked to imitate the curious tilt of her head. Elsa knows they can’t be in here all night— the scent of oddly-seasoned chicken wings wafting up the stairs reminds them constantly— so she takes Maren’s hands again and begins humming a gentle melody from the bottom of her throat, taking a moment before adding lyrics:

_ Am I allowed to look at her like that? _

_ Could it be wrong _

_ When she’s just so nice to look at? _

Maren chews her lip; there’s already hazel tears glittering in her gaze, but Elsa maintains her composure and continues.

_ And she smells like lemongrass and sleep _

_ She tastes like apple juice and peach _

_ Oh, you would find her in a Polaroid picture _

_ And she... _

_ Means everything to me _

_ Oh, oh... _

_ And she tastes like birthday cake and story time and fall _

_ And she... _

_ Means everything to me _

_ Yes, she means everything to me _

_ She means everything to me _

Elsa draws out the last line for a while, taking her time to relish in this wonderful sweetness. As soon as she finishes, Maren takes a moment to bask in the afterglow of Elsa’s serenade, then she exclaims, “Holy shit! You can  _ sing?”  _

They both burst out laughing at that reaction.

“Really, though,” Maren persists, dabbing the corners of her eyes with her sleeves. “I never knew— you never—”

“I don’t sing often,” Elsa admits. “I, uh, I like to save my voice for special times like this.”

Maren bombards her with a lovely flurry of kisses, then pulls her into a hug. “I love you.”

Eventually they pull apart, but Elsa keeps her close. “I love you too. And there’s one more thing. It’s taken a long time to perfect my technique, but I think I’m ready to show you.”

Maren’s jaw drops, as if she can’t possibly believe there’s more. “What is it?”

“I, um... let’s just say I found a new material to make dresses out of,” Elsa tells her. Then she steps back and slowly glides her outstretched hands over her body. A glittery coating appears, following the path of her hands, and within seconds Elsa has switched from her simple jeans and cardigan to a gorgeous ice gown stitched together by nothing but magic.

Maren stares dumbly. “Holy. Shit,” she repeats.

“You like it?”

“Like it? I— I—” Maren shakes her head in shock. “I’m utterly floored, if I’m being honest. But I love it.” Then the smirk slides back onto her face. “You think you can make ice flannels?”

Elsa chuckles. “I’ll work on it,” she says. 

“Now come on, spin around,” Maren commands. “It’s my birthday— kind of— so you have to spin around for me.”

Elsa obliges, twirling in place until she’s dizzy and Maren catches her in her warm arms. They blink at each other for the longest minute of their lives, then Elsa leans in to meet honey-flavored lips. Yeah, she thinks, luck is definitely on their side.


End file.
